


Pun, or, the Confession of an Unrealistically Reliable Narrator

by necrora



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, M/M, Mpreg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-17
Updated: 2014-10-17
Packaged: 2018-02-21 11:44:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2467082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/necrora/pseuds/necrora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dating your co-worker is hazardous at best, especially when you both work for the same superhero team. Dealing with an unexpected pregnancy with said co-worker—who’s grumpy and hormonal and knows how to turn into a direwolf at whim—is even riskier business. Finding out that your unborn baby has been prophesized to defeat the world’s greatest evil <i>is just too much.</i></p><p>Now evil is out to hunt Jared, and everything he loves and everything he didn’t know he wanted but now can’t imagine life without. And really, he’s all for dying for his true love, his child, and maybe the world, but at least someone could have warned him before fate offered him up to be the modern day James fucking Potter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [ spnmpregbb](http://spnmpregbb.livejournal.com/)
> 
> Please visit the amazing art post [here.](http://soserendipity.livejournal.com/32560.html/)

  


 

_[#813.J.54]  
This is the record preserved in the Restricted Archives, Superpowers Department, shelved on RN 813-J-54_ __.__  
It is all that remains of the history of the team formerly known as The Artists, being a coalition of ████████████, alias MindMaster, of ████████, alias PocketThunder, of ████████, alias Dragon, of ██████, alias Extinct, and of █████████, alias Pun.

 

  __

  


“I just don’t think,” Jensen says as he demolishes the front gates of Dr. Fortune’s mansion, “that we should keep taking the same days off. The team takes a hit when we do that.”

Jared really doesn’t think now is the time to talk about this. But Jensen’s glaring, Jensen’s fierce enough to take down an army of orangutans right now (Jared saw it done ten minutes and fifteen yards ago), and he decides not to argue.

“I just wanted to spend time together,” Jared says instead, panting a little. He fucking hates villainous mansions and their huge lawns. “It’s not like we didn’t make it here in time.” He gestures at their surroundings as proof, the cold grass and the wet air and the metal gargoyles, and thinks longingly of the comfortable bed where he and Jensen had been, just an hour earlier. Jared casts a lingering gaze on his boyfriend’s back, wrapped up in his tight black uniform hastily thrown on when their work comms had begun shrilling in the middle of a _particularly_ enjoyable session of—

Anyways. It all comes down to work-life balance.

Jensen’s not meeting his eyes, but he could also be scanning the area for any surviving henchman. “Yeah, well,” Jensen says, in a measured voice, “sometimes, we have to decide what our priorities are, Jared.”

Suddenly Jared feels cold, and it has nothing to do with the steel-saturated air around them. “Dude, are you—”

“Look out!”

A crater blooms in the spot where Jared had been, half a second ago; Jared rolls away from the second laser blast on instinct. He looks up to see a dark, looming, and truly ridiculous-looking figure on the roof, silhouetted against the moon, and he begins to run: their cover’s blown. Next to him, Jensen leaps impossibly high, his body elongating and changing mid-air, and a giant wolf hits the rooftop, several steps before Jared can get there.

Yeah, Jensen’s pissed. Thankfully, lightning strikes right next to Jared, and a strong current zaps him and carries him up to the roof as well. A tiny blonde girl lands next to him a second later, a gloved hand skidding on the surface.

“Thanks, PocketThunder,” Jared says.

“More fighting,” Alona says in return, “less relationship talk.” She blinks, and lightning strikes again, illuminating the scene. Jensen’s stalking across the length of the roof on his paws, crouched low and growling, towards their target. Jared sees that the ridiculous shape was a hat, with the letter ‘F’ bouncing on springs.

“Yeah,” Jared mutters. Alona’s gone already, floating into the open space above them, and he can feel the cackle of electricity spreading everywhere.

Jared itches to get close, back Jensen up like he normally would, but he was briefed: he’s useless in close combat against a clairvoyant. Fortune can’t actually do that much damage by himself, but he can read humans’ minds and what humans _will_ think in the future—it’s insanely hard to corner him at any time and close combat is near impossible.

His flaw is that his powers are useless against animals, and weak against shifters in animal form: Jensen.

_We got him_ , Alona’s voice suddenly interrupts in his head. Jared’s used to it; Jeff’s setting up their mental link. _We actually pinned Fortune down._ She sounds gleeful, and there’s a touch of calmness washing over them that’s all Jeff, supervising from afar where Fortune can’t read his mind and thus all their plans, and there’s the background rumbling that’s all Jensen’s wolf.

Speaking of: _Where’s Misha_? Jared asks, watching Jensen feint an attack, then growl when Fortune sidesteps just in time.

Jeff echoes the question, faintly, before coming back stronger. _Coming. The last one in line was a five-year-old and he couldn’t say no. Hang in there._

_Stop watching_ , Jensen suddenly growls, and Jared starts. _You’re predicting my moves, and he can read your mind. Look away_.

Jared lowers his gaze, seething and worried and torn: he understands, because he knows Jensen’s strategies and movements better than anyone else, but Jensen is also the one whose life is on the line, and Jared is the one who can’t even watch.

_I’m cutting Jared and Alona off_ , Jeff says. It’s the only warning Jared gets before everything goes silent.

He can’t even look up to see how Jensen is doing. There’s nothing but the current of electricity buzzing on his skin, and the sounds of snarls, getting closer—

Jared jerks up in time to get shoved back down by 180 pounds of wolf. He has a second to see a red flash, another to think, hysterically, _lasers, fucker’s got lasers_ , before he’s flattened further and the blast misses him by an inch.

It hits Jensen instead.

If they were still mentally connected, Jared might have heard a grunt of pain. Instead, Jared only feels the blood spurt from the body of his boyfriend above him, the salty taste he never wanted to know on the tip of his tongue, and feels his own heart try to roll out from under his ribcage in sheer panic, before Jensen pushes off and rushes Fortune again.

Jared skitters on the surface, gags, and has to close his eyes because he can’t look away and he’s _still_ not allowed to look. He hears another bone-snapping explosion and has no idea who’s hit whom. His fingers curl around the broken tiles, jagged edges cutting flesh, and he’s biting his lips so bloody, he almost misses the current around them weaken as Alona lets go.

The barrier implodes around them. Jared rears up,               forming on his fingertips and a storm brewing around him, then stops dead when he sees the giant dragon drop on both Jensen and Fortune.

_About fucking time_ , Alona pants, back online, and Jared assumes that means he’s free to watch, which is good because he can’t take his eyes off the dragon pinning Fortune down with one paw and easily picking Jensen up and throwing him towards Jared with another.

Jared catches him, jolted back, and immediately puts him down and grabs at his fur matted with blood. Alona’s riding a rush current towards the dragon and Fortune, and Jeff’s coming their way, but Jensen is beneath Jared and on the ground and hurt, and Jared can’t do anything other than make sure Jensen is all right.

And Jared explodes.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” he snarls, impressively, at the giant wolf with blood on his snout, who blinks up at him in mild surprise.

_What_ , the wolf says.

“That fucking stunt you just pulled,” Jared shoots right back. His fingers are trembling and twitching and skittering across Jensen’s fur, and his voice is cracking and he’s not sure whether it’s from adrenaline or anger.

_I’ll just, uh, keep an eye on Fortune_ , says the tinny metal sound that’s Misha when he’s dragon. _Make sure he doesn’t move_.

_I needed to keep Fortune away from you and Alona_ , Jensen says. He’s beginning to get to his paws, ignoring Jared to walk towards where Alona is standing by Misha’s wings. Growling, Jared grabs him by the scruff of the neck and hauls him back.

Jensen really hates it when Jared grabs him by the scruff.

It’s most snarls and growls as Jensen scrambles on his paws—he’s always a little off-balance when his scruff’s pulled up like that, which is why he hates it, Jared assumes—then Jensen scratches Jared’s knees to twist around and _bite_ Jared on the arm, but amidst the startling pain and the animal sounds Jared’s pretty sure he heard a _fuck you_.

_Guys_ , Jeff says. He sounds closer.

“You can’t just pull shit like that,” Jared snaps at Jensen. “You just needed to protect PocketThunder, hey, stop that, come back here!”

_You need to separate our personal relationship from work_ , Jensen snaps back. His hackles are up, and Jared _knows_ that irritated flickering of those ears, has seen them twitch just like that atop beds and living room couches before Jensen stormed out during a fight, and Jared’s incensed enough that he wants to bite Jensen back himself.

“You’re the one who risked the mission to save me!” Jared’s acutely aware he was fucking useless in this mission. But losing Jensen would’ve meant no defense line to keep Fortune in place. Jensen doesn’t have a leg to stand on here.

“Fortune’s bound,” Alona says, too brightly. Thin lines of electricity flows around Fortune, tying him down and rendering him useless. “Misha, you can turn back.”

_Fuck you_ , Jensen snarls, which he probably doesn’t mean to say, but they’re all connected mentally right now and Jared’s learned that it’s really hard not to say what you mean when there are four people in your head—five, probably, counting Fortune.

“No, I’m blocking Fortune right now, Alona’s electricity is keeping his powers to a minimum,” Jeff says, somewhere to Jared’s right. “Guys.”

_We can’t keep doing this_ , Jensen says, and it’s actually worse because through the mental link, the words come with a hint of worry and sadness, and a secret he’s trying to keep from Jared.

And Jared can’t take it anymore. His knees drop to the ground as he grabs Jensen’s snout, looks at him in his wolf eyes, and asks, in the calmest voice he can manage: “Jensen. Are you breaking up with me?”

“No!” Jensen’s face is beneath his hands now, human eyes blinking up at him in surprise. “No, I just meant to say—this thing is cutting into our teamwork!”

“No _shit_ ,” Alona says, as Jared demands, “What thing?” His chest is aching, because he’s pretty sure ‘thing’ means their relationship, the five years they’ve spent together, and the sex that they have, and the anniversaries they’ve kept and the ones they missed, and this whole fucking love, and he just cannot take this from Jensen Ackles right now.

Jensen blurts out, “I’m pregnant.”

He probably doesn’t mean to say that, either.

Jared’s heart and hands freeze. He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. After a long pause, a whine escapes between Jensen’s lips. Before Jared can unfreeze, a giant wolf slips out from his grasp and lopes away from him, and Jared is left staring at a fast disappearing tail.

“Wow,” says Misha, behind him.

_ _

_I, hello? Hello? Is this thing on? Testing, testing, one two three—_

__

Jared’s superpower is poetry.

It’s a lot manlier and deadlier than it sounds. Jensen rolls his eyes and tells Jared he cares way too much about being manly when he hears Jared say something like that, but Jensen turns into a direwolf at will. With huge teeth. No one doubts _his_ masculinity, even when he happily takes it up the ass from Jared nightly.

Jared’s power is classified as magic. He can make anything come true; he can erase anything from existence. He can bind and hurt and track. His only limitation is that he can only cast spells in poems. (See? Deadly. Jared knows for a fact nobody wants to be on the wrong side of an E.A. Poe poem.)

“Have some sweet nectar of life.” Misha dumps an unimpressive paper cup in front of Jared, then slides into the seat in front of him.

Jared considers the cup. It has a frowny face instead of a name. “Thanks.”

“Fortune is being transported right now,” Misha says. “Maximum security prison. Which is CIA talk for torture chambers, I hope. That hat was criminal.”

“Fortune also took out a mountain in Hawai’i for his evil experiment.”

“That too. We’re gonna be famous.”

            , Jared absently thinks, checking the cloak of inconspicuousness that he usually drapes around his team. The last thing he needs is some groupie or some henchman-wannabe realizing that Pun and Dragon are in a coffee shop in broad daylight. The Artists aren’t a _very_ prominent team, but they’ve taken down some big names and made the news a few times. Which reminds him:

“Jensen,” he says. “Has anyone been in touch with him since last night?” Jensen shouldn’t be alone, especially not if news of Fortune is going to get out. People recognize him too easily.

Misha shakes his head. “Jeff can’t get in touch with him. You know how he is when he’s wolf: refuses to listen, blocks us out. Runs from Texas to Yukon in about five hours.”

Jared does know. He draws in a deep breath, starts to say something because seriously, dating fucking Jensen Ackles, and suddenly slumps in his chair instead. “I shouldn’t have let him go like that,” he says.

“Probably not,” Misha agrees. “But who knew being a direwolf also came with pregnancy? Not sure Jensen would’ve reacted any better if you told him _you_ were pregnant, man.”

“Jesus Christ,” Jared says, because his boyfriend is pregnant. He grabs the cup in front of him and downs it in one go, doesn’t even feel it burn. “He wouldn’t have told me unless he was sure, right?” he says.

“Right.”

“It’s probably even freakier, being pregnant when you’re a guy—when already all your life you’ve been a wolf—than it is hearing that your boyfriend’s pregnant, right?”

“Right.”

The bitter taste of coffee and some unidentifiable emotion dry Jared’s tongue. “I should go find him.”

Misha considers him. “Only if you know what you’re going to say,” he says finally. “’Cause giving him time off is fine, man, but if you’re gonna go in flailing and saying dumb shit, it’ll be worse.”

“Yeah,” Jared says. “Yeah, I’ll figure out what to say to him. It’ll be fine.”

“Right,” Misha says.

  __

It’s                  to find w here Jensen is, and                 for Jared to walk there from Minnesota, where Fortune’s mansion had been.

He finds the leaning house on a remote shoreline of New England pretty quickly, but patiently stands there while the door refuses to open for him for full five minutes, quizzing him on the favorite colors of his owner. Jared has no clue, but he argues with the door long enough for Aldis to come fetch him.

“Well, look who’s here.” The technopath gives him a wide smile. “The darling poet of the Artists. How’d you find us here?”

“I didn’t,” Jared says. He knows he’s not being chased off only because Aldis used to work for the Artists before he transferred to his new team—whose secret HQ Jared has apparently come upon without meaning to. “I was looking for a wolf. About yay high, yay wide. Big teeth.”

“Think I saw him take a bite out of Chris downstairs.” Aldis eyes Jared speculatively. “Is this, the wolf is running from his angry boyfriend and their fight is going to destroy my house thing, or the wolf is going to sit on his pretty little ass while his boyfriend grovels thing?”

“It’s the wolf needs to _talk_ to his boyfriend thing, asshole.”

Aldis grins. “Fine,” he says, stepping aside. “They’re in the kitchen. Two floors down, make a right. I’ll get the elevator for you. Just don’t touch the stove, yeah? I’m trying to reroute the heat into my underwater imaginarium.”

“Sure thing, Geekneto,” Jared says. He’s pretty sure Aldis made the elevator lurch a little bit for that.

Given the steel wires that line the concrete walls of the hallway, Jared is pleasantly surprised to find that the kitchen is completely normal, wooden cabinets and spilt ground coffee on the counter. He’s less excited to see it’s only Chris, rummaging through the fridge with a cigarette in his mouth, and a blonde woman who pulls down her mask just as Jared steps in.

“I told Digital not to let you in,” she tells Jared.

“Be nice,” Chris says. “Hi, Jared. He’s out back. What’d you do?”

There’s a note of curiosity that makes Jared defensive. “Nothing bad,” he says.

Chris’ eyebrows quirk. “I’ve seen you two fight before,” he says. “I’ve seen him mad, man. I haven’t seen him sad.”

Jared falters halfway through the kitchen. “Is he really in a bad shape?” he asks. He likes Chris, he does, but the man was always kind of Jensen’s friend first, and he’s wary of Chris knowing Jared’s secret identity and everything. Also, he and Jensen sexiled Chris like crazy during school.

“He didn’t change back from wolf at all,” the woman answers for Chris. She’s levitating a series of steel balls with the kind of absent-mindedness that reminds Jared of Alona playing with high voltage electricity. “That was Extinct, right? I kind of expected direwolves to be bigger. Threw a fit, though, when Chris started smoking.”

“Thanks,” Jared says, and escapes to the backyard.

It’s a courtyard surrounded by the building, but much larger than the house itself looked from outside. Jared can faintly hear a waterfall somewhere to his left, and a forest populates the north end. Jensen is wolf, head lying rather forlornly on his forepaws under a ginkgo tree on the edge of said forest. He probably heard Jared come from miles away, but he hasn’t moved, which Jared counts as a win.

“Hey,” Jared says. He sits down next to him.

Jensen gives no indication of having heard anything. But Jared’s found that wolves and dogs will do that: ignore you as a way of communicating that _you did bad._ Bad Jared.

Jared wants to pet Jensen’s fur, tuck himself against the length of his wolf, but he’s half-afraid Jensen might bite him. Plus, he hasn’t figured out what he’s going to say; he had some vague ideas of starting with _I love you_ and continuing with _what do_ you _want to do, honey?_ but both fail him, now.

So instead he says, “Steak.”

Jensen’s left ear flicks, involuntarily, towards Jared.

“Let’s have steak for dinner,” Jared says. “Or—maybe, if we stop by that market on Ninth on the way, they’ll have some fresh T-bone, do you think? I think we still have some mashed potatoes in the freezer, too. And we should break out the merlot, not just the beer. We took down Fortune last night. It was good.”

Fur’s beneath his fingers. It is good. Jared buries his hand on the softness.

“And we should definitely turn our comms off, this time,” he says. “If Misha can be late because he was signing his horror books, man, we can totally finish fucking before we show up.”

Wet brushes his chin. Jared laughs. Warmth curls up, flush in front of him, and he willingly puts his arms around his boyfriend and waits for the fur to change into smooth skin.

“I shouldn’t have told you like that,” Jensen murmurs into Jared’s hair.

Jared’s a little more concerned with the blood he can see seeped into Jensen’s uniform by his ribs. “I’m sorry I yelled at you in the middle of the mission,” he says, only absently, sliding a hand under the fabric and concentrating on                . “But I’m a little insulted that you’re worried about me being so irresponsible. I can totally balance a superhero life and a baby.”

Jensen snorts into the top of Jared’s head. “You totally can’t,” he says. “But you can try.” His voice goes unsure, towards the end, and Jared lifts his gaze away from where the skin is healed to drop a quick kiss on Jensen’s jawline.

“Yeah,” Jared says, honestly. “I can try.”

Jensen curves his spine down. “Let’s go get dinner,” he says against the corner of Jared’s lips, the words sliding down Jared’s neck. He pauses. “I can’t drink, though.”

It takes Jared a second. And then he starts laughing. “Crap,” he says, still laughing, even as he tilts his head to evade Jensen’s half-hearted attempt at a bite. “Wanna race home?” he says as a peace offering. He’s going to lose because that direwolf is a fast little pup and Jared can’t quite remember the lines to teleport right now; but he remembers, now, how all their fights start and how they all end, and not why he thought pregnancy, somehow, will change that.

“Naw,” Jensen says, and smiles at Jared for the first time since the comms rang last night. “Take us home.”

As Jared whispers            , gets both of them out of there and towards home, careful of his spellcasting in a way he hasn’t ever been before, Jared thinks of all that love is and all that love could be, if only you give it a chance.

  __

Jensen and Jared live together, and they have a cat.

It’s kind of a deceptively innocent statement. Like they’re two puzzle pieces that fit perfectly together, full of love, a pet for practice before a baby.

Like Jensen and Jared hadn’t been dating since Jared was in freshman year, and like they haven’t broken up and gotten back together twice since then, each time such an explosive and miserable incident that their respective best friends swear up and down that _they_ won’t survive watching it happen a third time. Like Jared hadn’t pretty much held Jensen hostage in his house (with his dick) after they joined the Artists and time together became sparse, until Jensen gave in (for his dick) and let the lease on his old apartment die out. And like Jared hadn’t really, really wanted dogs and Jensen hadn’t kept saying _no, Jared, we have no fucking time for dogs,_ and Jared hadn’t gotten a cat mostly out of spite.

Echidna actually likes Jensen better than Jared, that feline traitor. Jared assumes it’s because she realizes that Jensen is actually a really big dog, and she’s mostly grateful that the really big dog hasn’t chased her up a tree yet.

“Dr. Fortune’s safely tucked away,” Jensen says from the floor when Jared comes out from his shower, lazily stretched out with Echidna curled up on his chest.

“I heard.” Jared dumps the wet towel, rubs his hair out—it’s getting long—and settles down next to Jensen, stretching. His muscles hurt from the last twenty-four hours.

“Our ranking has got to go up, after this,” Jensen says, with satisfaction.

“Undoubtedly.”

“The President’s gonna invite us to dinner, out of politeness, which we’ll have to decline, politely.”

“That’s how it usually goes,” Jared agrees. It is.

“We might even get federal funding this year.”

Jared snorts so loudly Echidna actually raises her head from where she’s been resting it on Jensen’s chin. “Don’t get your hopes up _too_ high.”

Jensen laughs, and Jared rolls over to his side, watching him and stroking Echidna’s head. The combined cat and wolf hair problem in his house is ridiculous and Jared has long given up owning any clothing in black except for his uniform, though Jensen on a grumpy morning will fight to the death over whether Jared’s shaggy long hair is just as disastrous (Jared saw it done, figuratively, two months back).

He clears his throat. “Have you been to a hospital?”

“Not really something I can go to hospitals for,” Jensen says, staring up at the ceiling. He’s wearing a worn-out Green Lantern shirt, and Jared can’t see any hint of a bump where the fabric stretches over Jensen’s flat stomach.

He still smooths his hand over Jensen’s abdomen, a little lower, where he supposes a womb might be in a man. He tries to imagine what might be underneath his hands. “We should find a hospital,” Jared says, quietly. “Ask Jeff, maybe. He always seems to know someone who knows someone.”

“Yeah.” The word blows on Echidna’s fur, ruffles it the wrong way. She huffs and nimbles down to curl up on the floor between the two of them.

It’s the three of them, lazying on the floor, and suddenly Jared’s throat aches, too afraid to even dream of what it might be like a year from now, with Jensen still wearing that same geek shirt and Jared still forgetting to get his hair cut in time and a baby that impossibly, inexplicably, somehow came from both of them: a kid, a family, a quiet evening.

“I,” Jared says, and his voice cracks and he has to start over. “I’ve been thinking.”

“I don’t like it,” Jensen says.

Jared flicks Jensen’s ear, which Jensen hates in either form. “Should we get married?” he asks.

Jensen’s eyebrows climb high. “Really? Shotgun wedding? You?”

“I’ll let you propose,” Jared says. “Make an honest man out of me.”

He gets a chuckle for that, but Jensen’s expression clouds unhappily. “I don’t want a marriage of convenience,” he says.

“No, I know, Jen,” Jared says. He gestures, nearly taking out Echidna’s eye, because he doesn’t know quite how to say what he wants. “Me neither. But you know, having a kid is kinda a bigger deal than getting married.”

“Yeah, I know,” Jensen says, and then, hesitantly, “I’m not—I’m not saying I wouldn’t, Jared.”

“Yeah.” Jared rubs his forehead, suddenly tired.

But then he feels Jensen shift closer, body flush against Jared’s as Jensen leans over, lifting his hand to rest against Jared’s cheek; and when Jared comes willingly towards Jensen, he sees the vibrant hints of wolf in Jensen’s eyes and the worry speckled amidst some unidentifiable emotion, the one he sees every time Jensen looks at him. Jensen’s worried too: about how Jared will take the pregnancy, how Jared will react, what Jared feels and what Jared will do, as much as Jared worries about Jensen.

Maybe they don’t fit together perfectly but they sure as hell fit _fine_ , and looking at the soft slopes running inside the hardened defense lines that make up Jensen, Jared figures that the two of them, they got the end pieces of a puzzle: they were lucky enough to be the first to be fished out of the box, and maybe they got pushed together a little earlier than normal, but Jared can deal with that. Jared is a fucking superhero.

“We’ll do that properly,” he says, softly. “One step at a time. We’ll do our relationship properly, we’ll do our marriage properly, and we’ll do having our baby properly.”

“Pup,” Jensen says, and leans forward to kiss Jared, capture him all over again like he did years ago, across the crowded floor of lost students when Jared looked up and saw Jensen staring back, the soft lines of his smile visible only to Jared even so far away.

  __

_Yeah, it’s on. All right, this being the confessions of one Jared Padalecki, a.k.a. Pun, recorded on_ █████████, _late at night sitting in the dark with a glass of whiskey, and doesn’t that sound like a depressing sight, hey? I’m in hiding, but I can’t tell you from whom._

_And it’s vitally important that I make this confession._

_Here goes._

__

The Artists totally have a secret HQ. It’s only accessible through a hidden door and a face recognition scanner, has a strategy room, and suffers from a couple of Echidna-sized holes from the time Jared unthinkingly brought her along and she met her first dragon.

It’s also Jeff’s two-bedroom apartment, a projector set up in the living room that never has enough couch space for all five of them to fit. Funding for superhero teams is sparse. It takes all of Jeff’s connections with his philanthropic socialites to fund their equipment costs, let alone their salaries.

But the hidden door and the scanner are true.

“A telephone booth is still the most obvious thing ever,” Jensen sighs as he stands in front of it.

“Your concern is duly noted, and will be considered at the next board meeting,” Jared tells him. “Get your ass inside, Ackles.”

“Don’t you think all this beaming is going to be bad for the pup?” Jensen bitches, and Jared bites the insides of his cheeks because yeah, that’s his big direwolf boyfriend pulling the pregnancy card already. But Jensen disappears obediently enough into the box, where the scanner set up by                         recognizes him and, indeed, beams him and the bundle of cells inside him up. Jared follows.

Jeff Morgan doesn’t look like the world’s second most powerful telepath. He’s not scrawny; he looks like a bear and mauls like one, too. Right now, he’s staring at both Jensen and Jared under scruffy eyebrows, and standing before his desk, Jared feels a bit like he’s in the principal’s office for doing something wrong, like knocking up the girl next door.

“I heard the good news,” Jeff says. “Congrats.”

“We’re not really here to talk about my unplanned pregnancy,” Jensen says. He’s the only one who gives Jeff attitude.

“We’re here to talk a _little_ about your pregnancy,” Jared says, because somebody needs to grovel, and clearly it’s going to be the poor six-foot-four poet with floppy hair, not the telepathic bear or the pregnant wolf. “We need to find a hospital, or at least a doctor, for Jensen,” he explains to Jeff. “We don’t really want to risk letting the public know that Extinct is pregnant, and anyways, I can’t imagine most hospitals know how to deal with male pregnancy.”

“I’ll find someone,” Jeff says. “But there’s something else I need to tell you.”

Jared grabs a seat because it sounds like Jeff’s going to get long-winded, and because he doesn’t know his life is about to shatter, not yet—

“There’s been a prophecy,” Jeff says.

It strikes Jared then that Jeff is worn out. It has never occurred to him before, because Jeff is the one with the master plan, back up plans, contingency plans; the one who got them together, founded the group, got them registered; the one with the passion, the drive that really exalted the Artists above a neighborhood watch into a superhero team striving towards the greater good. He’s been the tireless one.

He looks tired now. “Look. I really hate to be the one to tell you. You have no idea.” Jeff gives a short laugh. “But you two, you’re good kids. And you should know.”

“Uh oh,” Jared says. “Getting sappy. This is going to be really fucking tragic, isn’t it?” He’s only half-joking.

“Yeah,” Jeff says. “The prophecy’s about your kid.”

—and Jared’s nightmare begins.

“What the fuck,” Jared says, as Jensen, harshly, “Nobody should even _know_.”

“It’s a goddamn oracle,” Jeff says. “It’s not a matter of anybody knowing anything. Only how things are fated to be.”

“And what the hell’s fated to be?” Jensen’s voice is a jagged thing, a timbre of broken glass.

Jeff hesitates for so long, Jared’s heart hasn’t just crawled out from his mouth, it’s bleating a mournful death on the floor by the time Jeff finally says, “The kid’s supposed to grow up to—the kid’s supposed to be the one to defeat evil. Specifically: Prime.”

Jensen sits down really, really suddenly. Jared moves to catch him, only instinctively, because he’s not doing much better. But Jensen’s voice is steady as he asks, very calmly, “What, _exactly_ , did it say?”

“Jensen—”

Jensen snarls. It honest-to-god startles Jared because he doesn’t see the wolf come out like this very often, but Jensen’s pupils lengthen, and Jared can feel Extinct in every way as Jensen bares his teeth.

“ _‘A wolf_ ,’” Jeff says, after a long pause, “‘ _with his father ten millennia ancient. A bard, for whom false narratives come true. Their child will turn the world on its axis, and defeat the warper-wrecker that came before them.’_

Not exact, but—”

“That doesn’t have to be us,” Jared says. Jensen’s refusing to speak, maybe can’t, as wolf as he is now. “That doesn’t have to be us.”

“Jensen is the only extinct wolf in the world,” Jeff says. “And a bard? It doesn’t take a very long stretch of the imagination. I can see if I can get the exact wording, but that’s really fucking difficult, and I thought I should tell you, ASAP.” He rubs his eyes. “It might not be Prime, either, but there’s only one reality-bender on the loose right now.”

This isn’t bad news, Jared tries to think. So his kid’s destined for some greatness, maybe, _maybe not_. But then Jensen looks at him, horror etched in his features, and it hits Jared with all the force of a freight train running its course.

Prime is evil. Prime is batshit _crazy_. Last time he was pinned down, it took three separate teams and a classified government task force; when they got too close, he took out the Golden Gate Bridge. When he hears that Jared and Jensen’s kid is destined to beat him, he’s going to come after them. After Jensen. After their fucking kid.

Jared hasn’t even met his kid yet. Jared hasn’t even found a doctor for Jensen yet.

“I can try to get you two into protection,” Jeff is saying. “Pull some string, maybe in the government. And you know the rest of us will be happy to help out, especially once Jensen gets closer to the date. You two are some of the best I’ve seen, but it wouldn’t hurt to have some back up.”

“Does Prime,” Jared says. He can’t breathe properly. “Does Prime know?”

“It’s being kept under wraps for now.” Jeff isn’t looking at them, giving them the illusion of privacy. “And I’ll try my hardest to keep it that way, but—you might have to decide. Get protection, and risk revealing that the prophecy’s about you two, or stay under the radar and hope he won’t find out. I honestly don’t know what to tell you.”

There’s silence.

“Do we get a Bat-Signal?” Jensen asks into the air before him. His voice is unsteady, but his hand fumbles for Jared’s, and Jared grasps it, looks up. Finds Jensen slightly more human, less wolf, liquid mouth, soft cheeks. “I want a Bat-Signal. What’s our budget, can I get Batman as a personal bodyguard?”

“I’d understand if you left me for Batman,” Jared says. “I’d leave me for Batman.”

Jeff stares at them for a second, at their clasped hand, then his lips quirk. “Get out of my office,” he says, like the principal that Jared imagines him to be, but he’s smiling. “I’ll let you know after I’ve heard back from some people. Want me to tell Misha and Alona?”

“Yeah, thanks,” Jensen says. “Okay to—”

“Your vacation still stands,” Jeff says. He nods at them both. “Team should discuss this soon, though. And I’ll let you know once I’ve found a medical facility.”

“Thanks, Jeff,” Jared says. His hand’s wrapped around Jensen’s shoulder, halfway out the door already.

“I wouldn’t leave you for Batman,” Jensen says, as the door closes behind them, before Jared can say anything. “You’re my baby daddy. At most, it’d be an illicit, hot messy affair on the side.”

“He’s got more money than I do,” Jared answers, easily enough, but his hand doesn’t let Jensen go. Can’t. “If it means my child has a chance at the billionaire life.” He opens the telephone booth sitting so conspicuously in the corner of the living-room-turned-strategy-room, and follows Jensen into the booth instead of waiting his turn.

Jensen doesn’t object. “Are you planning on dying?” he inquires. In the tight space, his fingers are curled in the front of Jared’s shirt.

“I’m not really a Vader type,” Jared says. “I think I’m more like James Potter. You certainly Lilyed me enough before we dated, remember, Mr. TA?”

“We should pick a last name,” Jensen says, like that’s a perfectly good follow-up and like that’s what’s important right now. Jared thinks it might be. “I can’t have the world’s chosen one sporting a name like Ackles-Padalecki. That’s just awful.”

The booth deposits them back into the world. Neither of them move.

“A week,” Jared says. “Let’s just. I’ll go pick up some stuff. We’ll stock up, and just stay home for a week and forget about everything: prophecy, Prime, Artists. Watch movies. Have sex. Lots and lots of sex. Echidna can go stay with Misha if she wants to.”

He’s not above another kidnapping with only dubious consent on the part of his boyfriend, if Jensen tries to work this week. He’s not needed anywhere this week, at least not more than Jared needs him under Jared’s eyes and Jared’s body. Besides, he knows how to make Jensen a willing hostage (with his dick).

But Jensen nods. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. You go to the mart on Ninth, and I’ll—”

“Go straight home,” Jared finishes. “You go straight home, all right? Channel your inner princess, Padmé, and just go home. I can spell my way around faster without you.” He sees Jensen about to argue. “Get our home ready?” he asks, softly, because he can play dirty.

Jared can pinpoint the second Jensen gives in. “All right,” Jensen says. “But get me a latte. Big one. And hurry back.”

“Sounds good.” Jared kisses the corner of Jensen’s mouth, along Jensen’s jawline, towards his ear.

“Jeff’s probably watching,” Jensen points out, then bites a gasp back when Jared slips a hand under his shirt.

“I know,” Jared says, really fucking smugly. He likes to imagine sex around Jeff all the time. He figures it’s his duty to remind Jeff the price of being a telepath.

“And Padmé was a queen, not a princess,” Jensen adds. He pushes Jared off, steps out of the booth. “Go,” he says, laughing.

Jared gives a mock salute with a “Yes, Your Highness,” and watches Jensen smile and turn and walk away for long moments, just to see the orange afternoon light saturate the tips of Jensen’s hair. Standing in the warmth of the sun, Jared thinks distantly, _we’re walking through a graveyard at night, and we’re whistling through it._

Right at this sun-kissed second, there are people who are starving and who are homeless and who have lost their loved ones. Jared is twenty-four and a superhero and a poet and in love. Jensen is a direwolf. They’re orphans, but they’ve found their way to each other. Everything is going to be fine.

An hour later, Jared is at Starbucks picking up a big and disgustingly sweet latte when Jeff speaks into his mind: tell shim that the Northwest half of his house has been blown away. With Jensen in it.


	2. Part Two

 

  


  
  
“I’m here to see,” Jared has to take a big breath, chokes on it. “Hi,” he tries a smile at the receptionist staring up at him with wide eyes, a man with short hair and a pen with a huge flower on its end. “Hi, I’m, I. hi. My boyfriend got into an accident, I heard he got transferred here.”

Jared’s hand grips the counter and there are hundred lines running through his mind, helplessly, rhymes and rhythms trying to find an outlet. His entire body’s straining. He just needs to get to Jensen, he’s a fucking magician, he can do the rest. Thank fuck he knows spells, thanks dad, thanks mutation, thanks whatever the fuck that decided he was going to be a freak with magic powers. He’s thinking some Milton, some Blake, maybe Latin if it’s really that bad, please don’t let it be that bad.

“Last name?” the receptionist asks.

“Ackles,” Jared says. At the next possible moment, he’s making it Ackles-Padalecki. Jensen isn’t going to have a choice. Fucking Jensen Ackles. Jared’s heart can’t take any more of this abuse.

The receptionist’s hands pause on the keyboard. “Oh,” he says.

“Oh,” Jared repeats, blankly. Oh. “Oh, what?”

“I’m sorry, sir, he’s been—”

_one_

There’s blood everywhere, and Jared’s trying every poem he can think of but Jensen just slowly bleeds out on him, eyes gradually going dim, all his life smeared on Jared’s hands, each shallow breath such a crawling inch towards death that Jared completely misses it when it happens.

_two_

They’re drawing the pale sheet over the body and Jared can see movement inside the room, but they won’t let him see Jensen again one last time, keeps saying something about his own good for his own sake; but Jared can _see_ movement inside the room, and they won’t let him see Jensen again one last time, keeps saying something about his own good for his own sake; they draw the pale sheet over the body.

_three_

Jensen’s so still on the bed, pale-faced and long-limbed. There’s no color anywhere, cold white light bearing down on the cold white sheets above a cold white body, and Jared feels dirty just standing in the doorway, a flesh-colored blot in a pristine kingdom where he daren’t enter.

_four_

“—not here.”

And Jared snaps out of it, feeling a strong hand grip his shoulder, and he turns around to see Jeff staring at him.

“Jesus,” Jeff says. “Kid, what are you doing here?”

“Jensen,” Jared says. His mouth is dry. He realizes that the receptionist with the flower pen is staring at them; he’s forgotten to cast the    cloak around him. His throat’s closing up, and the pale sheet shimmers before his eyes as he asks, pathetically, again, “Jensen?”

“He’s safe,” Jeff says. “The blast nearly got him, but he got away in time. Misha’s with him. Alona and I were looking for you, couldn’t find you at all for a moment. You okay?”

“Oh god,” Jared says. He feels his legs give out, staggers. It’s the weakest he’s ever felt in his life, and he was one of the fifteen kids taken hostage by Drain when he was in middle school. “Oh thank god.” Then he remembers to ask, “The baby?” and the fear comes rushing back.

The metal button on Jeff’s jacket glints sharply into Jared’s eyes as Jeff turns back and answers, “Jensen’s getting a check-up right now, but it seems like it’ll be fine. Shock’s the biggest risk right now, and it’s going to help him more if you’re there, kid. Let’s go.”

As Jeff walks towards the door, Jared figures out how to untangle his limbs enough to follow. His fingers flex, sticky, as he pushes the door open.

  
Jeff picks up Alona, and they go to a government hideout in Virginia, riding on the back of Jared’s                  . It’s not Langley, but it’s close. Two agents meet them at the door, decked out in suits and intrusive earpieces, one of them sporting two spiraling horns on her nape.

Jared doesn’t notice any of it. He doesn’t remember the security measures they have to go through, or Jeff explaining in a very roundabout way which government facility it is and whom he had to beg to get Jensen here on such a short notice. He’ll worry about it later. Right now all he can think is what’s waiting for him at the end of the gray corridors winding a labyrinthine path, the floor patterned with a single red tile every five steps.

When they finally reach a door and the agent swipes them in, Jared steps in and sees Jensen straighten up from the examiner table, sees the pale sheets pool around him. But even the pallor of Jensen’s skin is so much warmer than the nightmares lingering in Jared’s mind, and relief visibly floods Jensen’s body as he sees Jared, exactly at the same time that Jared feels it spreading through his own.

“Dude.” Jensen has a weak smile. “Where’s my latte?”

“Get your own, bitch,” Jared says, and strides across the room to snatch Jensen up in an embrace. “You fucker,” he breathes into Jensen’s skin. “You asshole, you most inconsiderate dick, Jesus Christ, you motherfucker.”

“I love you too,” Jensen says. “I love you too.”

Jared doesn’t bother answering, mostly because _you’re marrying me today_ is not appropriate right now.

When they finally break apart, Jensen says, “I’m not going to swear anymore.” He winces a bit, adjusts the IV on his arm, and Jared belatedly sees that a nurse is standing awkwardly next to Jensen, eyes wide and holding what looks like a jar of gel in his hands.

“No?” Jared asks. He doesn’t let go of Jensen’s hand but he moves back, a bit, so that the nurse can come forward and continue what he’d been doing, which apparently had been pulling up Jensen’s shirt.

“No,” Jensen says, solemnly, as he closes his eyes and leans his head back. “’S not good for the kid. No more swearing or getting mad. You, too.”

“Okay,” Jared agrees. Jensen could ask him to fetch him Christmas cookies made on Mars, and Jared thinks he would probably ask how many. Dr. Seuss probably wrote about it at some point.

“And get off me,” Jensen adds. “My bladder’s going to burst. And I want to see my pup.”

Jared finally steps back fully. He realizes that the nurse has finished smearing gel over Jensen’s abdomen, and now holds a suspicious-looking probe in his hand, which Jared assumes is an ultrasound. “Sorry,” he says, giving the nurse a full-on Padalecki smile, dimples and all.

“He’s the father,” Alona says, dryly. Her arms are crossed and her mouth’s quirking from where she sits on the edge of a table, which Jeff is looking at very disapprovingly. “In case you couldn’t tell.”

“I could tell,” the nurse says. He turns the machine on. “Don’t worry. In this facility, we see something like this often. Including the whole male pregnancy,” he says to Jensen, who raises an eyebrow. “All right, Mr. Ackles, if you could just lean back for me comfortably. Take a deep breath.”

Jeff clears his throat. “Uh, we can go,” he says to Jensen and Jared. “If you two would like privacy.” He gestures vaguely at Alona, who look disappointed, and Misha, who’s apparently about to take a video of the entire thing on his phone.

Jared looks at Jensen. Jensen still has his eyes closed, head tilted back, no other movement; and Jared knows what that means.

“Nah,” he says, to all of his teammates. “It’s fine. We’d like you to be here.” He pauses. “But turn that fudging thing off, Misha.”

The nurse pushes a lot more buttons before the ultrasound starts going. Jensen tries to find a chair for Jared at some point, but Jared shakes his head at him; he’s not convinced he can do anything but rigidly stand there and hold Jensen’s hand. He’s been so relieved to find Jensen in one piece that he hadn’t even had time to get nervous about this, and now he’s holding his breath, staring at the screen, wondering what he’s about to see and what he’s supposed to feel and how he’s supposed to react.

It’s all static at first. Black and white, and some movement as the nurse moves the probe around. Jared guesses it’s pretty hard to find the womb in a guy. But then the image sharpens, unerringly closes in on something—and Jared’ll think about exactly where that is, later, but for now, he’s looking at—that’s—

“We can’t see the heartbeat yet,” the nurse says, after frowning at the screen for a bit. “But it’s still really early. I’d guess most people wouldn’t have even realized that they were carrying at this point, if they didn’t have your powers. Of course, your powers might also be interfering with how fast or slow it’s growing.”

“Does it have paws?” Jensen asks. Jared manages to glance down long enough to see that Jensen’s eyes are still closed. His hand is marble-cold under Jared’s. “A snout? A tail?”

“Uh, no,” the nurse says, sounding a bit bewildered. “No, Mr. Ackles, but—”

“Jensen, look,” Jared says. “Look,” he says. Every movement he sees, he feels something inside him beat in time with it. It’s. “It’s so beautiful,” he says.

Jensen’s gaze bears into him. After a long moment, Jensen slowly turns to look at the screen.

After a pause, Jensen says, “You fudger. I can’t even make out what that is.”

Jared bursts out in laughter, helpless as he leans into Jensen’s shoulder. “That’s our baby you’re insulting, babe,” he says. His head is swimming, he’s so tired, and he’s so happy he doesn’t think anything could beat the fullness he feels inside right now, like _he’s_ the pregnant one.

“Yeah, wait, I think I can really see your nose, right in the corner there,” Jensen says dryly. “Tyke really takes after his dad. Or am I his dad?”

“You’re the mom,” Alona says. She’s giving them a look that clearly says _idiots_ , but her gaze also lingers where Jared and Jensen’s hands are grasped together, where Jared’s head is leaning against Jensen’s shoulder. She cocks her head at the screen, grins back at Jensen. “Mom is now a genderless word, thanks to you.”

“God, I’m a mom,” Jensen says. Then, sharply: “Jared, you’re hurt.”

“I am?” Jared starts, and looks down. There’s dried blood flaking on his skin. He takes his hand out from Jensen’s, rubs a bit, frowning.

“Go patch up,” Jensen orders. He looks worried, like _what the fuck were you on that you didn’t even notice?_ and Jared wants to answer, pitifully, pathetically, _I thought you were dead_ , but Jensen’s hand gently pats back Jared’s hair. Jared doesn’t even want to think about the sheer wildness that must be his appearance.

“We’ll be here,” Misha says. He’s taking a picture of the ultrasound on the screen. “Make sure our resident mom is well-looked after.”

Jensen gives Misha the finger, because apparently the no-swearing rule extends only to voice, and Jeff takes Jared’s elbow and gently leads him away. “You two are temporarily being protected here,” he says, in a low voice. “It’s a hideout for one of the federally funded teams, but they gave us access, especially given our response to their call about Fortune.”

“Yeah,” Jared says, thinks he should say _thank you_. “Have they asked—”

Jeff shakes his head. “They don’t know why Jensen was ambushed.” His mouth tightens. “Technically, _we_ don’t know why, yet, Jared.”

“Yeah,” Jared says, thinks of some other words he’d like to say. _We should get out of here,_ he thinks instead, and stares at Jeff, pretty sure that the telepath could hear it. _I don’t really trust anyone who isn’t us, man._

Jared can see the way Jensen tilts his head up, from the corner of his eye. Jensen also heard that thought. Jeff’s nod is for them both.

 _Go clean up_ , Jensen says to Jared. It’s the gruff wolf voice Jared always hears through their mental link, but a touch softer in timbre than usual. Jared wonders if it’s the pregnancy. _Then we’ll discuss plans_.

The living quarters prepared for Jensen and Jared are small and clean and nondescript. Echidna, who was apparently saved by being out in the yard when the attack happened, crouches on the highest counter she could find. Misha picked her up, and from the way her tail twitches, Jared thinks she’s equal-parts relieved to see her butler and pissed that he let this happen to her.

Jared scans the place with _Faith is a fine invention, for Gentleman who see—_ as he waits for his teammates to arrive. He’s not planning on staying. He’s feeling protective, possessive, caveman. If he could get a mountain and a cave to put his wolf in, and a club to hold while he paces the entrance and grunts at everything that comes close, he might be happy.

Jensen has a radical idea. “I’m going back home.”

“Is Jared’s pup draining your brain power from inside?” Alona asks, sounding concerned.

“She means it’s fucking stupid,” Jeff says.

“No swearing around Jensen anymore,” Misha says. He’s taken that rule the most to heart.

“Babe,” Jared says, as gently as he can.

Jensen gives them all an unimpressed look. “It’s the last thing they’ll expect,” he starts.

“Oh my god, I have seen this movie,” Alona says. “The guy dies at the end.”

Jared's pretty sure Jensen is about a lick away from biting them all. “Look, Jared and I picked that place because it was safe. We can add more protection spells so that they won’t even be able to find it anymore. How do you think I got out in time today?”

“How _did_ you get out?” Jeff asks, his tone mild.

“Underground tunnel,” Jensen admits, like he’s admitting he plays fetch with Echidna sometimes. “Jared and I made it, half as a joke, sometime ago. It’s our Batman pole.”

“Rainbow sprinkles and chocolate chip muffins,” Misha says. “Brilliant.”

“Wolves don’t like sugar,” Jensen says. “Lay off it in front of my pup.”

“Celery and mayo,” Misha says, more dubiously.

“When?” Jeff asks, and it takes a moment for Jared to understand that the question’s directed at him, too. Jensen looks over, and he shrugs. He’s surprised that Jensen managed to remember it at all, but he supposes nearly dying will do that.

“Point is,” Jensen says, forcefully, “We can disguise it, so that the house looks abandoned. Maybe we can even leave it unrepaired for the most part, too. But make it impenetrable, have the door be somewhere else, like Jared did for Jeff’s apartment.”

“Make more Bat-poles,” Jared says. He’s not entirely on-board yet, but he can’t deny the attraction in the idea of returning home.

It’s also kind of worth it just for the way Jensen grins at him. “More Bat-poles,” Jensen agrees.

“It’s not a _bad_ plan,” Misha says. “We can all stand guard, there, too.”

There’s a knock on the door. They exchange looks, and Jared calls out, “Yes?”

“Mr. Morgan?” One of the agents from earlier, the one with horns, pokes her head in. She looks around them with a grim expression, and her gaze settles on Jensen. “Mr. Ackles? You might want to see this.”

The news report shows a snapshot of a man half-there, half-not, a shimmering image of a face smudged around the edges, grey-flesh and a spark of yellow in the irises. It’s the best photo of Prime in existence. Under the photo flash the words: PRIME BREAKS IN, STEALS RESTRICTED ARCHIVE.

Jensen’s hand fumbles for Jared’s. Jared doesn’t respond. It’s not Jensen looking for comfort, it’s Jensen looking to comfort Jared.

“How did that happen?” Jeff asks. Everyone stares at the tv.

Amy, the agent, says shortly, “Prime’s a reality-bending villain. The folks at the Department of Unnatural and Numinous Gifts try their best, but sometimes we lose.”

Alona snaps her fingers. The images on the tv suddenly jumps from the screen to the air, projected bigger and louder: _“—before Prime left, he broke into one important archive in the facility, though authorities are currently refusing to confirm exactly which—”_

“That,” begins Jensen.

“He was at the prophecy archives,” Amy says. “We don’t know what he was looking for, but we’re trying to discover which records were taken, right now.”

Jensen’s hand finds Jared’s again, and this time Jared grips it.

Jeff gets up. “Thanks,” he says. “Let’s go, everybody.”

“We, uh,” Amy looks from Jeff to Jensen to Misha to Alona to Jared, to Jensen again. “I was told not to ask about the reason behind the attack on Mr. Ackles,” she says, tentatively.

“Please thank the nurse for me,” Jensen says, not unkindly, as he grabs Echidna. “And really, thank—Jeff, who got us in here?”

“Confidential,” Jeff says. “But I’ll pass the thanks on.”

Alona turns the tv off with another snap, and comes to stand in the middle of the room, electricity beginning to cackle from her hands. “Barrier?” she asks Jeff, who looks at Mish for confirmation. Jared lets Jensen pull him closer to the rest of the team, his hand still firmly in Jensen’s grasp.

“But,” Amy says, confused.

“Watch out,” Misha says, mildly.

A dragon soon soars up into the Virginia sky. Jared sits on Misha’s back, strapped into place by Alona’s power, makes the entire entourage invisible with a whisper, and holds on to Jensen tightly, the tips of his hair gently teasing Jared’s nose.

_Hi, baby, it’s your daddy. All right, I’m really hiding from your mom. But only because your mom has huge teeth. Trust me, kiddo, your dad’s an awesome superhero._  
We haven’t actually decided your name yet. We mostly call you Harry or Luke, but we don’t even know your gender yet.  
And I never did get to see your heart beat. I have a lot of regrets, but that’s honestly one of my biggest.  
Sorry, hun.

The name of the organization known as ARTIST is actually an acronym: Artists Responding To Injustice, Scoundrelism, & Terrorism. Literally nobody likes to acknowledge it, because it is exactly as lame as it sounds.

Alona works backstage in Broadway theaters Tuesdays and Thursdays. Jeff is an associate professor who never got his tenure. Jared technically runs an online comic book store with his college friend, and mostly uses his powers to find limited editions for desperate nerds everywhere. Misha writes children’s horror books featuring a lizard detective and his skeleton sidekick, and gay erotica under a different pen name.

Jensen, well, Jensen’s just a grad student on indefinite leave for health reasons. His thesis has everything to do with his being a famous child tragedy case and the only surviving member of an extinct species, and jack-all to do with actual academia. His only aspiration to art has been modeling on some wildlife preservation promotional materials. No one has somehow managed to call him out on this, either.

Aldis is a straight-out painter, but he’s also a fucking traitor.

“I don’t have to take this abuse,” Aldis says. “I don’t even understand why I had to come with you today.”

“You owe us, man,” Jared says. They’re arguing in front of a government facility somewhere out in Alaska, and Aldis does not look happy at all. There’s snow everywhere. “You ditched our asses just because you like Defiance’s boobs. That’s why you left, right? She’s the hot one?” Jared remembers the blonde woman. People might go evil for her.

“Yes, yes it is,” Aldis says. “And yes, yes she is. God.”

“Also, Chris is with Jensen today, and you have no friends outside of your team.”

“Yeah,” Aldis says, glumly. “And I think Plan M owes MindMaster or something. He kicked my ass out of bed this morning.”

“People usually owe Jeff,” Jared agrees. He’s never met Plan M, but their leader sounds just as scary as Jeff. “Ready?”

Aldis adjusts his tie, then his mask, strangely out of place above a suit. Jared feels the same, in a grey suit that restricts his movements, and wishes he could have worn his uniform, comfortable on him like a second skin. “Ready,” Aldis says.

They walk in. The place isn’t at all what Jared expected. ‘Archive’ always reminds Jared of dusty bookshelves, maybe some sleek steel walls and strange liquid floating around, vaguely mad doctor-esque. Instead, cedar panels on the walls and high mahogany shelves lined up like dominoes greets him.

“Pun.” The man who’s been reading at a table on the far side looks up when they come in, and greets them with a wry smile. “And—Digital?”

“Rex?” Jared asks. He hasn’t been told if that’s the man’s name or alias. The man isn’t wearing any masks.

“Yup,” the man confirms. He’s a typical librarian, with a three-piece suit and wiry frame glasses on the tip of his nose. He looks around, grins, and spreads his arms. “Welcome to the Restricted Archives,” he says. “Area 51 always sounds a lot cooler when you don’t know where it is, right?”

“That’s fair.” Jared likes small talk as much as he likes suits. “So, the prophecy that Prime took.”

Rex beckons them, and starts disappearing among the stacks. “One of our most recent ones,” he calls over his shoulders. “Do you know how prophecies work, Pun? Digital?”

“The prophet says something really cryptic,” Jared says, following. Aldis matches his steps, but Rex walks fast for a man who works as a librarian for a bunch of restricted records. “It’s supposed to come true in some way in the future.”

“Sometimes rhymes, too,” Aldis says.

Rex snorts, comes to a stop in front of an empty slot on a shelf. He taps the spot three times. “I suppose different oracles over the centuries have made prophecies in different ways,” he says. “Our department, in today’s world? Superpowers are everywhere. Villains and heroes populate the land. We get one kid with prophetic powers, and everyone’s losing their mind trying to stop it from coming true. Disaster, everywhere.”

“So you…” Jared raises an eyebrow.

“So we record it, _once_ ,” Rex says. His mouth is thin. “We make sure that it’s not copied elsewhere. There’s supposed to be only one copy of each prophecy, and it’s supposed to stay here.”

Jared gestures at the empty space. “Except this.”

“Except this,” Rex agrees.

Aldis is studying the records that surround the slot. “These aren’t just records,” he says, curiously. “It’s machinery, but not all of it is binary codes. There’s magic, too.”

“Don’t touch anything,” Rex says, in a mild tone.

Jared’s not interested in anything else. “Who made the prophecy?” he asks.

When the archivist is silent, Jared glances over at him. He’s taller than Rex and it’s a matter of slanting his sight down. It doesn’t matter; Rex isn’t looking at him, shadows from the shelves bruising the details of his expression.

“Confidential?” Jared asks, with a quirk of his mouth. “That’s fine. I’m surprised you let me in.”

“Not many agencies can withstand the pressure from both Plan M _and_ MindMaster,” Rex says. “And I’m not letting you _listen_ to any of them.”

“Do you have powers?” Jared doesn’t mean to come across as an asshole, he really doesn’t, but he realizes only a second too late how it sounds. Still, he’s wondering: if they know what kind of power he and Aldis have. If Rex has been specifically assigned for babysitting duty so he could stop either of them if they tried anything by force. And if so, what kind of powers Rex has.

But the lilt of the man’s lips is a Mona Lisa, subtle as a smudge from a painter’s brush. “We’ve been keeping our eyes on you,” Rex says, and it’s aimed specifically at Jared. “You’re not ambitious, the Artists, and you’re all focused on doing good work, big or small, so you don’t make the papers. But really, a dragon? And PocketThunder’s textbook example of a Class A power? And magic is always a little volatile, but it has unlimited scope.”

It hits Jared then. “You’re hoping we’ll go after Prime,” he says, slowly. “You want us to do this job.”

“Everyone should be going after Prime,” Rex says, easily. “Have the Grifters taken a crack, yet?”

Jared doesn’t bite. “Why us?” he asks. “Yeah, we might be better than people think we are, but there are actually better teams out there.”

Rex is judging him. Jared sees the moment the man decides to tell him. “You know,” Rex says, “one prophet could run a world mad.” He speaks softly, like he’s trying to hide his voice from something. “One half of Department of Unnatural and Numinous Gifts is about keeping the prophecies archived and making sure they’re not leaked. But—some time ago, we also decided that we can’t have prophets out there making predictions that’ll drive people crazy. Our other job is to bring those people in.”

“Fortune,” Jared says. “Fortune’s a clairvoyant.”

“He was the last one on the loose,” Rex confirms. “No more predictions for anyone outside of here.” He sighs, folds his arms. “The man was insane, and not only because of his penchant for criminally ugly hats. Most are driven mad by their powers. But some of them haven’t done anything yet. They don’t have bad lives here, but they don’t have a choice. It’s—you can see where the dilemma is.”

Jared nods, slowly, and thinks of Jensen and their kid, and of the kind of interest a government might take in a chosen one with the power to end the greatest villain of their era.

“So I suppose they figured you must have something,” Rex says. He’s back in character again, shrugging good-naturedly before he turns away. “But Prime’s for the other half of the department. We’re only about the fortune-telling. Are you done?”

“Yeah,” Jared says. He carefully doesn’t look at Aldis. “We are.”

They follow him out of the forest of shelves. Jared has one foot out the door and the other still on the carpeted floor when he hears Aldis ask, finally, curiously, “Do you remember what the prophecy was _about?_ ”

“Me? No,” Rex says. “The librarian is not supposed to listen.”

Jared eases the tension out of his body. “Let’s get back,” he says, trying to sound normal, once they’re outside.

“That wasn’t too bad, was it?” Aldis asks. He looks a bit unsure, but he grins at Jared. “Maybe I shouldn’t have ditched your asses after all. A lot of pressure, but sounds like you’re destined for greatness, man.”

“Yeah,” Jared says. “Greatness.” He wants to scream.

When Jared was fifteen, he was kidnapped off the street on his way back home from basketball practice by a supervillain known as Drain. He was held in the top floor of a tower, not as a hostage, but as a _battery_ : the entire thing powered the villain, who was using five kids he’d found the same way to fuel him while he swept through the Pacific Ocean to dig up some mineral. When Jared tumbled out of the tower, wrapped up in the arms of a now-retired pyrokinetic, he learned that he was now an orphan.

Magic’s scope is supposedly unlimited. Jared’s never tested the boundaries. That nightmare was enough. He suspects he can’t go beyond it now, if he ever could have.

When Jensen was six, his wolf form was first correctly identified as _Canis dirus_. Two weeks later, he was kidnapped by a group that wanted to study an extinct race. Jared would see the aftermath only twenty years later, in the dim morning light when Jensen gets out of the bed and stretches, in the very light lines of scar tissue running down Jensen’s body. The same group tried again when Jensen was fourteen, this time taking him deep into the mountain and trying to breed a new species of wolf.

That one, Jared doesn’t get to see the aftermath at all. Jensen hates winter; Jared doesn’t realize why until much later.

When Jared was nineteen, he took a Philosophy of Magic course, taught by a Prof. Morgan who was not, it was said, a superhero, with only a touch of spellcasting ability in him, enough for academia but not for the field.

When Jensen was twenty-three, he was a PhD student and an orphaned Class A, whose sob story and adorable photos as both a pup and a kid had made the news several times. He refused to change more than a few times a year, and wore hoodies to class, a cap that hid his hair, and thick brown glasses.

That night when Jared looked up and saw Jensen, he apparently had been mostly lucky, because Jensen had gotten back from one of his rare changes and the wolf had been thrumming. And Jensen had seen the floppy-haired freshman who was staring, and he’d smiled.

Prime has the prophecy. Prime was behind the attack on the house. Jared sees his house, a quarter of it missing and another quarter caved, and understands the feeling behind some of John Donne’s poems.

“I’m back,” he calls out, after getting Aldis past the security measures and into the house. The mess is a little better inside, but broken junk still litters the floor, and Chris and Alona are eating chips on the kitchen counter. Jared sighs a bit.

“We’ll clean up,” Alona says around a mouthful, her legs slinging as she sits on the counter. Jared glares at her for Jeff’s sake. “How was the archive?”

“Nothing new,” Jared says. “About what we expected. I’ll debrief when Jeff gets back. Where’s Jensen?”

“Upstairs,” Chris says, and pulls Jared aside. “You should know.” His voice is quiet, running beneath the noise of Alona and Aldis giving each other shit. “Jensen went to see Jessica today.”

Jared opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. He aims for casual. “How did it go?”

“She wouldn’t see him,” Chris says. “He knocked and knocked, and said it might be the last time he could get to see her. I think that might’ve made it worse, to be honest.”

Jared swears, quietly. “Did he tell her about his—”

Chris knows about the pregnancy. He’s the only one outside of the Artists to know about it, beyond Jeff’s friends at the Virginia facility, and Jared hopes to hell it’s going to stay that way. “I think he was too ashamed by that point. He’s always messed up when it comes to her, Jared. You know that.”

Jared does know. “I should go find him.”

“Also, uh, he didn’t want me telling you,” Chris adds, in a hurry, as Jared turns to leave. “So.”

“Thanks, Chris,” Jared says. He means it. He understands why Jensen went to see her, but Jensen also never brings her up in front of Jared if he could help it. He never would’ve asked Jared to go with him.

When Jared gets to the top of the stairs, he catches a glimpse of Jensen disappearing off into the bedroom. A little confused, Jared follows him, where he sees their entire wardrobe and what looks like all the fabric Jensen could find in the house, piled in heaps all over the floor and on the bed. In a corner, he sees an old college sweater that he could have sworn he lost two years ago.

“Hey,” he says.

Jensen pulls out an old and sorry-looking bed sheet, frets over it, and places it just right on top of a pile of Jared’s socks. “I’m nesting, okay? Turn the lights off.” He doesn’t look at Jared. “I didn’t even know wolves nested. Maybe it’s because I’m extinct.”

“I’m not going to have any clothes left to wear.” Jared gingerly makes his way across the room.

Jensen tosses him a plastic bag. “I got you new underwear,” he says, and he sounds so miserable that Jared has to look up. “I needed more sheets, but when Misha brought back new ones, they all smelled wrong. Turn the lights off.”

Jared puts the bag full of cheap underwear down. He turns the lights off, and in the sudden darkness, he carefully walks back to their bed.

Jensen’s an unmoving figure half-buried in old towels. “Hey,” Jared says, sitting down next to his boyfriend.

“How was the archive?”

“It was fine.” In the bubble of their bedroom, thoughts of Prime and the prophecy feel like a whole different world. “I heard you went to see Jessica,” Jared says instead.

Jensen stiffens. “I’m going to kill Chris,” he says.

“I heard it didn’t go too well.”

“No,” Jensen says. “And she was right. I shouldn’t have gone to see her, when I’m an even bigger target right now. God, I hope I didn’t put her in danger.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine.” Jared tries to find Jensen’s hand under all the towels, a task that proves pretty difficult. “She shouldn’t have blocked you out like that.”

Jensen’s quiet. “I’m sorry,” he says.

Jared doesn’t know what to say. He never has, when it comes to Jessica, and Jensen hates talking about her to Jared, because apparently he feels guilty about complaining about the family he does have when Jared doesn’t have any left.

Jessica is Jensen’s baby sister, and they have not spoken to each other for half of Jensen’s life—longer, for her. All Jared knows is that she blames Jensen and his freaky powers for the danger his family was put in. He can’t imagine what to say to Jensen to make it okay for him to talk to Jared about her. But he _can_ imagine Jensen trying to talk to her, probably wearing the hoodie and cap that never used to leave him before Jared and before the Artists: standing outside her door, only a hand on the surface because he’s too afraid to knock and draw the attention to her, whispering desperately for her to open up so he could just talk to her—because he’s done that exact thing for Jared.

“You can’t kill Chris,” Jared says, instead. It doesn’t come out as lightly as he was aiming. “Who else is going to be our kid’s godfather?”

“Man, anyone but him,” Jensen says, with such forced cheer that Jared’s teeth aches. “The pup is—”

“Jensen,” Jared says.

For a few seconds, Jensen stubbornly holds out, sitting rigidly; and then the tension goes out of him.

“I hate it,” he says. The admission hangs quiet in the heavy navy blue air of the room. “It feels like my body isn’t my own. I don’t feel in control of my own body, and I can’t stand the lights, and I want to kick everyone out of my sight, including you, but I also can’t stand not being surrounded by your smell. And Jared, I couldn’t even protect my baby sister properly.”

They silently sit on old cotton and cheap polyester, the evening sun edged by the cheap frosted glass Jensen bought a year ago for privacy. Jared counts the plastic stars on his ceiling, which Jensen hates, and thinks about nurseries and baby beds and wallpapers with Transformers on them.

“Jensen, if you’re not ready,” he says, and his voice sinks like soot and he has to start over again. “If you think we’re not ready, we can—try again, later. Be more prepared. Maybe not have this prophecy hang over our heads.”

“I know.”

“I love you. I’ll love you whatever you do.”

“I know.”

“I hate—Jensen, I hate seeing you unhappy.”

“I know.”

Silence rules again, and then Jared feels Jensen’s head on his shoulder, a fluttering, feather-light touch that pinpricks all of Jared’s nerves along his spine.

Small, unsure, Jensen says, “I know it’s early and we have to wait for the heart to start beating and we need to talk this over properly. I know it’s early and anything could happen. But I like this one. I love this one already. I want this puppy. Nothing else—no one else is going to do.”

If Jared’s heart decided to shatter and fill his veins glass-sharp, he doesn’t think it would hurt this much, and if Jared has never been so heartbroken before he also doesn’t think he’d understood what being happy meant, before this. Carefully, he creeps his arms around his boyfriend, bringing his languid body closer and pressing lips against his temple in a wordless gesture of love.

_If you’re here listening to this, obviously I’m not there to tell you this in person. So here are all the things I want to tell you.  
I hope the first thing you learn how to do is love, because you grew up knowing nothing but. I hope you’re loved and you love. I know you’ll be hurt and you’ll cry and I wish I were there to chase away every bad thing, wipe every tear. I’m so, so sorry that I’m not._


	3. Part Three

 

  
********

  


"Let's go after Prime."

Jared’s in middle of the strategy room, a.k.a. Jeff’s living room. He’s in his uniform. He stands sternly and suavely, a strategist, but mostly because there’s no room on the couch even with Alona sitting at the counter.

Jeff taps out of his telepathic phone call and shoots Jared an unreadable look from the kitchen. “Go after Prime.”

“I have a better idea,” Alona says. “Prophecies have to come true, right? So if it’s really Jared and Jensen’s kid, then at least Jensen has to live long enough to give birth, and whatever happens, the kid’s going to defeat Prime.”

“Do I die?” Jared asks, dryly.

Alona shrugs. “You don’t need to be alive.”

“Fatherless heroes are kind of in,” Misha agrees.

“Thanks, guys. It’s good to know I’ve fulfilled my purpose in life now that Jensen’s round with my baby.”

“Maybe _I’ll_ die,” Jensen says, from where he’s lying down on the couch. He’s got a wrist over his face, blocking out the light. “And Jared’ll use this experience to shack up with another wolf, and that kid’ll beat Prime.”

Alona zaps Jensen from afar. Jensen raises his head and glares at her. “You can’t die,” she says. “Our team sucked in representation. Only one woman in a team of five is atrocious, but now we have a pregnant male wolf.”

Jensen lets his head fall back with a thud. “My purpose in life is fulfilled. I’m so glad people find me a lot more important now that I’m round.”

Jared gives up. He scoots over to Jensen on the couch and lifts Jensen’s legs up so he can settle down under them, Jensen’s feet in his lap. “I don’t,” he says. “A lot less sex. And you’re far from round, sweets.” He curls a hand around Jensen’s belly, which is plenty flat, and thinks distantly: _we’re walking on a fucking minefield, and we’re whistling through it._

Alona snaps her fingers, turning the projector on. “So,” she says, brightly. “Plans for taking out a reality-bender, mastermind?” She’s addressing Jared, not Jeff, who’s paced to the window and has his back to the rest of them. “I hope you have many, many contingency plans. This will not be fun at all.”

“We have a dragon,” Jared says. He’s unconsciously echoing Rex. “And we have a wolf. And a textbook example of a Class A superhero. And the world’s second most powerful telepath.”

“You’re okay, too,” Alona says. She snaps her fingers again, and the clipart changes to the Norton Anthology of Poetry.

“You can rhyme the sugarplum out of any villain,” Misha agrees.

“And I have an awesome dick, which impregnates awesome wolves with the next generation’s heroes,” Jared says. He gets zapped. “So! Plan.”

Jeff’s bear shoulders are slumped. “What did Rex say to you, exactly?” he asks.

“That we can go ahead,” Jared answers. “That they’re pretty much waiting for us to take a crack at Prime. I don’t know what the prophecy means, Jeff, I didn’t get to hear it. But seems like everyone’s just waiting for us and Prime to have a go.”

He takes a deep breath. “And I say we go for it,” he says. “I know it’s crazy. I know it sounds selfish, cause look, it’s my boyfriend and my kid at stake here, but you guys?” Jared thinks of the salty sounds of the Pacific, the paltry lights of lecture halls, Alona’s laughter when she met her first dragon. “This is the only family I’ve had since I lost my parents. And I’m not going to let Prime stay out there, with a huge target hanging above all our heads.”

Jensen hits his chest with his feet. When Jared looks over, Jensen lifts himself up and gives him a kiss, short and deep. “Chocolate streusel,” Jensen says, with a crooked smile.

“We’ve all got issues, “Alona says. She’s looking down. PocketThunder never takes her gloves off, and Jeff yells at her about sitting on the counter, all father-like, because she _likes_ it. Because she hasn’t ever had anyone do that for her. “But that’s why we’re here, right? Superheroes, the Justice League, the Order of the Phoenix, whatever.”

“I just wanted better plots for my books,” Misha says. “I got them.”

Jared gets a vision of shifting fractals and, strangely, the smell of cinnamon. It’s what he usually gets when Jeff is planning. He kicks his heels back, and waits.

When Jeff finally turns around, he looks old. “This is what we’re going to do,” he says.

  
The fight goes something like this:

Finding out Prime’s location is not difficult. Prime’s a reality-bender, but he has to exist somewhere. Pun scries him, locks on a location. Prime is in Canada of all places, up in the Rocky Mountains. There is a mansion, which Extinct absolutely loathes. When the Artists get to the place, Dragon takes out the entire Northwest wall. Quips on poetic justice are exchanged. PocketThunder surrounds the entire mansion with a barrier, not letting anything in, not letting anything out. The rest enter.

Prime uses human followers. It’s not something the Artists have ever encountered before. But they do have a dragon.

 _This is effing crazy_ , Misha says, somewhere up on the north side. _Where are all these people coming from?_

 _There’s more outside,_ Alona alerts them. Jared gets a brief image of her floating in the air, the electric barrier still intact. _I’m keeping them out, for now._

 _They’re actually crazy_ , Jeff says. _I think Prime created them, or plucked them out from their own dimensions, or_ something. _Point is, none of them should be here, and they’re all stark raving mad_. There’s a brief sight of Jeff mauling a man who’s wearing a medieval armor.

 _Zombie minions_. Jared throws the henchmen surrounding him into a nightmare, immobilizing them. Now he’s remembering a date with Jensen his sophomore year, when they played House of Dead II in the arcade for hours, wasting dollars and shooting at the tiny screen.

This might almost be romantic, if Jensen weren’t just thrown into a wall beside him. Jared eyes the distance between him and the wall, shrugs, and blasts it away.

 _Found it_ , Jeff says, suddenly. _Jared, you see it?_

 _Gimme a moment,_ Jared mutters, then helps Jensen up and steps over the rubble. He sees the door: nondescript wood, a bruised bronze doorknob, all flickering in and out of existence. _Yeah,_ he thinks. Can’t get any clearer than that. _I see it._

“This is still a really dumb plan,” Jensen says, from somewhere to his left. He’s human again, wiping blood from his mouth with the back of his hand and achieving a truly fearsome growl at a couple of the henchmen who’s followed them.

“We’ve pinned him,” Jared says, because he agreed to this plan, even though he’s not at all sure that behind the door is Prime, or if Prime _is_ there, that he isn’t about to be hammered into nonexistence the moment he goes through.

Jensen spits out more blood, and fingers the collar of Jared’s costume, hauls him down. “Come back,” he says. “Come back out of that room alive, Sarah Williams.”

“All right, Hoggle,” Jared says. He’s not going to kiss Jensen: that’s too much like acknowledging what this scene is. He’s not going to mess up the genre Jensen’s forced them into.

 _Go_ , Jensen says, turning around on all four paws to face the new wave of enemies at the same time Jeff says, _come on_.

Jared grabs the doorknob before it can shift out of existence again, and steps through. Then laughs involuntarily.

It’s an Escher room.

 

“Shit,” Jeff says. Jared finds him walking in from a doorway that’s sideways on the wall, down the stairs that start upside down and somehow winds its way right side up by the time they get to where Jared is standing. It hurts his eyes just to look at it. Jeff carefully climbs down, takes an object from his pockets, and throws it experimentally into the complicated maze in front of them.

The rubber ball bounces into the wall in front of them, then falls _up_ , landing on a platform on the ceiling

Reality bending, Jared thinks, throat stark-dry. Nothing in this room obeys the natural laws that even the most powerful superhero knows to be inexorable. And Jared understands, finally, why Prime became so infamous so quickly.

 _Is this really going to work_ , Jared thinks, and the thought gets involuntarily delivered to all his teammates.

 _I don’t know_ , Jeff says, at the same time Jensen growls in the background, _go_.

Jared takes a deep breath, draws upon the image of a dull pallor of an old gas light that’s not his own, and injects into the air:         , softly,                  
  
A block of stairs fall, to Jared’s left, towards the ground. Jeff walks forward, and gravity stays down. Jared follows, feeling the space around them ripple.

Pun isn’t reality bending. But it feels close, so close, to what Prime must feel, as time and space rearrange around him, even to return to normal as Jared knows normal.

        , slowly, like talking to an injured animal,          , and Jeff catches the rubber ball that falls from the ceiling as the platform groans and reattaches to the wall. Every step goes against the grain in the fabric of reality, and Jared sees the colors around them fade until the scene is nothing but black and white, varying levels of ebony and ivory.

Pun isn’t countering Prime’s power. He’s casting depression—                       —and slowing everything down, including the effects of Prime’s powers.

Jeff stops. They’re in the middle of the room now, and in a bubble around them, reality is normalized, glimpses of wrongness on the edges. Jeff reaches out, grasps the empty air—Jared blinks, he could’ve sworn that Jeff’s hand clutched around fabric—then rips away the barrier in front of them.

And they come face to face with Prime.

Jared can’t see Prime’s face. The entire space where the villain might be is blurred, billowing in and out of existence, but it undulates forward, towards them.

“Hi, Wallace,” Jeff says, and his voice is topsy-turvy uneven.

Jared starts a bit, but of course Prime wasn’t born Prime—he had a mother, a father, a brother. Then Jeff turns everything off, and Jared’s left with no connection to this world, not even the background noise of his colleagues fighting, nothing but a room where reality bends and his poetry runs a thin thread through the nooks.

That was the plan. It was a dumb plan, Jared can admit now, staring at the villain who’s not even properly in this dimension: Jared would dull Prime’s power and get Jeff close, and Jeff would attack Prime’s mind, because presumably even Prime couldn’t use his powers if he couldn’t use his mind.

“I need to talk to you,” Jeff says. His expression is strained. Jared wonders if he’s already trying to get a grasp on Prime’s mind. Wonders if that’s even possible. “Hey, Ace. Can you come back here?”

For long seconds, there’s nothing but the hum of      . And then slowly, painstakingly, Prime unfolds himself and stands up.

He’s tall. Older than Jared, but still younger than Jared had expected, a man in his thirties, freakishly thin. Jared can’t look away from the face of the man who’s never been caught on camera, who looks lost, confused, but whose eyes are completely hollow when they flicker to Jared before returning to Jeff.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” that young face says, and it’s a small voice, almost scared. In the same breath, Prime turns his palm up, and in his hand is a rubber ball that looks exactly like Jeff’s. He drops it, watches it fall to the ground, then looks up at Jared. “How are you doing that?” Prime asks.

“Little bit of this,” Jared says. “Little bit of that.”

Prime tilts his head, takes a step forward. “          ?” he sings, and Jared winces at the sudden pain that bubbles up from his feet. His hold on the spell weakens and suddenly the room is more sepia, yellow sipping in the rocks and brown flickering in the shadows.

“Wallace!” Jeff says. The pain fades. “We came to talk to you. We want to help. Can you come with us?”

Prime’s silent for long moments, a face so still it could have been a photograph. Then a tongue slips out, wets his lips. “Jared,” he says.

The world slips from Jared’s grip for a moment, going sideways on him, and he doesn’t think it’s Prime’s power. “What?”

“You don’t understand,” Prime says. “You have to see. I’ll show you.”

In next breath, Jeff’s lunging forward, trying to catch the chaos as it moved, but Prime’s upper body twists around and grabs Jeff’s forearms. His eyes don’t leave Jared as he lets go of Jeff, and Jared can’t look away either, can’t breathe, can’t react, but in the periphery he can see that where Jeff’s arms had been, there’s only a swirl of a mess bending inwards, a blur of flesh and bone.

Jeff doesn’t even scream as he falls to the ground, can’t.

Prime rapidly steps towards Jared. “             ,” that young face says, and Jared’s breath hitches. “          .”

“    ,” Jared says. The spell dies on his fingertips. “Yeah, I get it, big man.”

“No, Jared,” Prime says, and he almost sounds sane as he reaches for Jared’s face. “You understand nothing.” A fingertip touches Jared’s forehead, and his sight begins the blur, and he’s honestly not sure whether it’s the world that’s blurring or his eyes.

Jared thinks maybe he should have kissed Jensen after all. “          ,” he rasps.

A nail rakes Jared’s cheek, and everything is rapidly fading, all his sense falling away. “Jared,” Prime says, almost gently. “Prophecies don’t need to come true.”

“Could’ve fooled me.” Jared’s not sure his vocal cords are even working. “The way you go on about it.              .”

“Stop it,” Prime hisses.

Jared hits him.

It’s a weak punch, on a man who’s nearly his own size. But it catches Prime off guard, and as he stumbles backwards, Jared can see again, and he puts both hands on the ground, the normal ground, his ground and not Prime’s, and pours in:

             , Prime stands up, __         , the room is trembling,                .

It’s all he has, just then, and it works for five short seconds: bricks crumble around them as the room normalizes completely, rearranging to make sense of the world once more.

“The prophecy,” Prime says. Then suddenly he chokes a cry, twists away and collapses to the ground, convulsing.

Jared turns his head and retches. When he looks up, eyes watering and bile in his mouth, he sees Alona with her hands held out, bleeding from the head, her concentration completely on the writhing figure in front of Jared. “I got him,” she says, not taking her eyes off Prime. “I got him.”

Something heavy lands on Jared, and Jared catches 180 pounds of wolf on instinct. Jensen paws at Jared, scratching his cheeks, and a high whine escapes from the wolf’s throat, which is honestly funny to Jared at this point, relief and fatigue washing over him. Jensen’s never whined like that before, but Jensen’s wolf had never had to communicate vocally before. Which reminds him:

“Jeff,” Jared says. “Jeff needs help.” Then he says, “Yeah yeah,” laughing, honest-to-god laughing, at Jensen, who’s shoving himself at Jared, and yes, Jared wants to kiss him, too, but not with that extremely bloody snout in his face. He looks up as Misha lands beside them. “How’d you get here? And Jeff,” he reminds them.

“Congratulations,” a new voice says before Misha can answer, and Jared stiffens as he looks up. Four more figures emerge, much better-dressed than Prime’s followers, and Jared’s jaws drop as he recognizes one of them.

“Rex?”

“The men in black are here,” Misha says. He looks exhausted, but he’s cradling Jeff, trying to get him off the ground. “I think we were the vanguard.”

Jared can’t take his eyes off the man who’s casually stepping down the stairs, towards where Prime is in too much pain to do anything, and where Jared’s pregnant boyfriend is bleeding beside him and nearly wagging his tail at just seeing Jared alive, where his team leader’s had his arms twisted out of existence.

“The vanguard,” he repeats. The words taste sour. “Were you just waiting for us?”

Rex isn’t wearing glasses anymore. He looks completely different from the librarian who stood in the shelves, full-on agent now, a black turtleneck and a utility belt slung around him. He’s still got that damned mild smile. “We didn’t want to mess up your plan,” he says, like that explains anything. He gestures for the three agents to come up and circle Prime. “We can take it from here,” he says, politely, to Alona.

She can’t say anything. She’s pale and biting her lips bloody.

One agent moves to handcuff Prime, and Jared distantly recognizes the power suppressants on them. Then he sees Rex’s eyes fixed on Jensen, who’s still wolf and still lying half under Jared’s body, trying to support him. Rex licks his lips, and Jared registers that there are too many agents and too many power suppressants for one person, and thinks: _fuck no_.

“Mr. Ackles,” Rex says, and smiles when tension ripples through all the Artists.

 _Get ready to run_ , Jared thinks, he desperately thinks, doesn’t honestly know if Jeff has the presence of mind to connect them together at this time. Magic tingles on his fingertips again.                                                     

Someone screams into the air: “No!”

It takes a second for Jared to register that it’s Prime: Prime’s struggling, handcuffed, caught but no electricity pouring into him, and screams again. “No!” He’s not looking at Rex. “No! Don’t let them take me away again!” He’s not looking at Jared, either, whose guts twist a bit at the words.

Prime’s looking at Jeff.

 _What_ , Jared has time to think, just as Jeff says, into all their minds: _I’m sorry_.

And Jeff, supported by Misha, with mangled arms, bleeding, panting, lifts his head and sweeps the entire room in blinding white light.

There isn’t actually a whiteout. Nothing’s physically changed. But Jared’s eyes ache and his body flinches, even as the logical side of his brain protests, _no, no, this isn’t real, there isn’t actually a light—_

It takes several seconds for the pain to fade. When it does, Jared immediately pushes to his feet, but apparently Prime’s been bending again, because he’s already on the other side of the room, pale and backing up from everyone else, but it’s Jeff that Jared’s eyes immediately go to: Jeff, who’s by a half-formed window that Jared doesn’t remember seeing before, arms rapidly healing even as the window finishes solidifying behind him; Jeff, who’s shouting at Prime: “Come on, Wallace, come _on_!”

Free, standing up, Prime’s not looking at Jeff. He’s looking at Jared.

Jared doesn’t get time to react. Abruptly, that very same breath, Prime’s standing in front of him, and Jared feels Alona’s electricity and Misha’s fire and even the agents converging on the space that he’s occupying together with Prime, Jensen’s fur beneath his fingers, and in the next breath he’s kneeling on carpeted floor.

He recognizes the mahogany long shelves staring coldly down at him. He’s in the Restricted Archives.

“The prophecies don’t need to come true,” Prime says, behind him. Jared whips around, and finds him just standing there, holding a record in his hand. Fur touches Jared’s fingertips, then Jensen curls around him, forepaws ahead of Jared as he bares his teeth at Prime. Jared tries to grasp him, pull him behind, but Jensen’s unmoving.

Prime shakes his head at both of them. “You break the record,” he says, “and it won’t come true.” He throws down the record to the floor, and it smashes to pieces, machine bits flying out. Jensen flinches at the sound, but Jared’s watching as the entire thing disappear into thin air, remembering Aldis’ words: book, machine, magic.

“But you have the prophecy about your death,” he says. “Have you just—broken it?” Abruptly he wonders if there had been no prophecy since the day of the attack, all this time.

But Prime, Prime says: “I didn’t take the prophecy.” He’s in front of them again, shape shifting in and out of reality again, as if in anxiety. “Jared, I didn’t take the prophecy about my death.”

Then he jerks his head back, and stares past Jared’s head with dawning horror; and Jared, feeling like the jaws of his nightmare just unhinged and opened up beneath him, turns his head.

"No," Rex says. He’s librarian again, glasses and a suit, staring at all of them like they’re talking in the quiet section of _his_ library. "No, I don't suppose he did."

“ _You_? _”_ Jared asks. Jensen growls, and Jared puts both his hands on the wolf, tries to stop him from moving in front of Jared like Jared’s the one who needs to be protected. His fingertips are tingling but he has no idea who to attack, what poems to recite. “You took the prophecy?” Jared asks, and then, “Why didn’t you break it?”

Even as he asks, even before Rex gives him a small sad smile, Jared knows it’s dumb. The prophecy’s a tragedy only to Jared and Jensen. No one else would have any reason to break it.

“You were the only one with the powers to bring that one in,” Rex says, tilting his head towards Prime. “I needed to find a way to bring Wallace in.” His tone is conversational, reasonable. “So I created the prophecy, and it was leaked to the leader of the Artists. I figured your kid would provide a good motivation—although if you couldn’t succeed, hopefully he or she would’ve inherited your wonderful powers, as well.”

This isn’t a nightmare. This is Jared slipping into a nightmare within a nightmare. “You’re fucking kidding me,” he says, and doesn’t recognize his own voice. “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

“Tell you what,” Rex says, and he smiles. “You capture Wallace for me, and I’ll break the prophecy about your wolf and your kid.”

Jared’s going to die. He knows it, even before he shoves Jensen away as far as he can, even before he takes a step back and lifts up his arm to protect himself. The space just before him twists, sudden vacuum pulling everything in, and Jared barely pulls               in front of him, stopping it from sucking him in. Prime blurs in front of his eyes, his teeth glinting in the dim library light briefly, and Jared know he’s not grinning.        

It’s            and                  , but Jared doesn’t even have time to form them properly before they all dissipate, a hand jumping out from chaos and through the spells to grab him, and Jared doesn’t have the time to whisper goodbye before Prime reaches in and twists the space that he’s occupying.

He thinks he might’ve heard _I’m sorry_. He hopes he’s hallucinating the howl, full of rage and sorrow, that’s vibrating inside him even as his skin ripples and dissolves.

But he’s not hallucinating when he hears, “Ah, well, that’s a disappointment.”

And Jared, choking out blood, feeling his body fade away on this plane and firing the last synapses of his brain, looks up and sees Jensen, human, staring back, the soft lines within his eyes dimming even so far away, and blood falling from his mouth and from his chest where the wrong end of a blade glints.

Time bends. It’s the only explanation Jared has, because somehow his body is three seconds from hitting the ground dead but his mind is experiencing three eternities just watching Rex wrench the blade back and Jensen’s lifeless body falling to the ground at what must be the same speed as his own, and Jared’s mind waits until the end of those three eternities before it understands what happened.

And Jared turns the world on its axis.

_one_

_I don’t think Jensen should come with us,_ Jared says. Amused, Misha asks, _Did you actually plan this meeting so he can’t be here to take a bite out of you when you suggest that?_ And Jared says _No,_ by which he mostly means _yes_. And Alona adds, dryly, _So if we all get killed on this mission, Jensen raises an incredibly bitter child who’s going to be consumed with revenge all his life?_

_four_

Jared doesn’t even get to hear how it happened for a long time; he gets taken out by Prime on the way, and he simply wakes up weeks later to hear that Jensen’s been long gone, while he was tied to the bed surrounded by all these wires, and half the time he’s convinced that he’s fifteen again and his parents are out there waiting.

_sixteen_

It doesn’t even take an entire word to teleport them back to the house. Jared deposits Jensen down on the sofa, glances at the door, and then the windows. They all disappear. Stairs now line the room, ascending in six different directions and descending in the same, doubling back in paradoxes that he doesn’t even need to think about. _Jared_ , Jensen says, and there’s that emotion again: fear. Jared kisses his temple, says _everything’s going to be fine._ And then the wall behind Jensen is being taken out, and there’s a dragon, and even as Jared starts to reach for all the particles that make up the air between him and the dragon, he sees Jensen’s throat torn out.

_nineteen_

—and Jared snaps out of it, feeling strong arms around his shoulders, and he looks up to see Jensen staring down at him, frightened voice asking, urgent hands gripping, “Jared, Jared, come on, Pun, what’s wrong?”

“Jensen,” Jared says, except he’s not sure his tongue is working because instead of looking relieved Jensen just looks more alarmed. He looks concerned for Jared, which Jared feels like maybe he hasn’t seen for a while, and Jared blinks back tears. Jensen’s putting his hand on Jared’s cheek like he used to, rubbing them away.

A hand grips his upper arm. Even as Jensen rears up with a snarl, Jared looks up to find Jeff, staring down at them.

“Come on,” Jeff says, and Jared thinks he’s heard that word before, that tone. “Come _on_.”

Prime is in the conference room of the Artists’ HQ. He’s curled up on the couch and holding Echidna tightly to his chest, and it’s not even the strangest thing in Jared’s fucking life right now. But Prime drops her as soon as Jared steps out of the telephone booth, and they stare at each other across the room.

Jensen’s there in the next second, and his hand curls into Jared’s as he steps before Jared. His back is solid against Jared’s front, which is the only reason Jared doesn’t complain as Jensen comes between him and everyone else in the room—Prime, on the couch, and Alona, hurt and tired and dirty, and Misha, picking up the cat with her wounded pride from the floor, and Jeff, who’s just stepping out of the booth.

“Sit,” Jeff says, and everyone sort of does. Jared’s not sure he can manage much more, but Jensen pushes him into a chair, leaning behind him, hands roaming all over him, trying to make sure that Jared’s not hurt, or maybe to make sure that Jared’s all solid and in this dimension. Jared leans back and lets Jensen do it.

Jeff throws a water bottle at them. Jared catches it, because apparently his muscles are not on good terms with objects being thrown at Jensen right now. “Drink,” Jeff says. “I’ll explain, but you should stay hydrated. All this really can’t be fucking good for your pregnancy.”

“Don’t concern yourself with my pup,” Jensen says. Prime’s in the room and he’s still the only one giving Jeff attitude.

Alona asks, in a tired, confused voice that Jared can really sympathize with: “What happened?”

“Jared disappeared,” Jensen says.

“Jeff’s helping Prime,” Jared says, because he remembers that much, and that really feels like something that should be shared with everyone.

“You’re bending reality,” Jeff says to Jared.

And maybe Jared is, because he’s pretty sure time slows down, and he can’t understand what the words mean for long seconds. “I always could, in theory. Magic,” he says. “But you know, limited. By poetry. And me.” He can almost taste his own lie.

“No.” Jeff’s voice is flat. “You’re bending reality, and you’re out of control. You’re bending reality to the point of creating alternate timelines.”

And suddenly Jared remembers the times he felt blood on his hands, tasted tears on his tongue. He remembers a pale sheet, too, and horror and realization dawn on him, all the vague memories that never happened.

“We don’t have to,” Jensen starts, angrily, but Jared shakes his head.

“No.” He doesn’t recognize his voice. “No, I think I did. But it’s not on purpose, or out of control.” He looks up, meets Prime’s eyes, can’t think. “I think,” he says. He can’t think. “Weeks ago. When I thought Jensen was dead.”

Jensen stiffens, but Jeff looks back at him. “The hospital,” he says. “You were suddenly MIA for a while.”

“I thought you died,” Jared says to Jensen. “I remember your dead body in the hospital. And then everything was fuzzy, and then Jeff grabbed me.”

“And this time?” Jeff asks, tersely.

Jared opens his mouth. Thinks of the blood and the tears, the fear in Jensen’s eyes. “Same thing,” he says instead.

“Babe.” Jensen’s voice is soft, and also tinged with fear. And that seizes Jared up, because he knows the fear isn’t caused by him, this time, but he _remembers_ Jensen saying that because of him, in another life.

“So,” Misha says, slowly, “Jensen dies, and you just—reverse time?”

Jared gives a bark of laughter. “I guess,” he says. “You’re the genius,” he tells Jeff, “I barely remember anything. And I can’t decide to bend anything, right now,” he says, almost defiantly, to Prime, who’s sitting quietly.

At Jared’s look, Prime opens his mouth, but Jeff jerks his hand towards him and he shuts it again in a hurry.

“How did _you_ know?” Jensen asks Jeff, fiercely.

“My civilian persona isn’t a lie,” Jeff says. “Prof. Morgan does have a bit of magic, enough to feel it when time is being bent. And that first time, the tunnel that you used,” he says to Jensen, slowly. “I wondered. The timeline of when and why you made it seemed fuzzy, when I asked you two about it.”

“I don’t,” Jensen starts, and he sounds so lost. Jared abruptly pulls on the grip that he has on Jensen’s hands, pulls Jensen down on his lap. He spreads his legs so Jensen will have room, but mostly he needs them to be touching right now, make sure that he’s grounded.

Jared’s going to tell him what happened, as much as Jared can remember, later. Right now, he lies: “It’s gonna be okay,” he says. “If it means you’re alive, we’re alive, right?” He swallows.

But Jensen, Jensen’s eyes are wide with grief and wild with all regret when they turn on him: “Jared. That means the wrecker could be you.”

It takes a moment for Jared to understand what Jensen’s trying to say. What Prime was trying to say, maybe. And suddenly nothing is okay, suddenly Jared can’t even pretend. He thinks of the memories of violence and destruction. His kid could be prophesized to stop _him_. He could be Vader, after all.

“No,” Prime says.

Everyone turns to him. And Prime, the greatest evil of their time, who probably killed Jared in a few dozen alternate timelines, shrinks back and looks up at Jeff imploringly.

“Jeff,” Jensen says, sharply, asking, because Jared can’t.

“I’m sorry,” Jeff says. He closes his eyes. “I should have. I’m sorry.” He rakes a hand through his hair, and Jared remembers Jensen telling him, laughing, years back and still in school, how Jeff stopped doing that, got afraid of balding. “I should have told everyone.”

“Told us _what_?” Alona asks, at the same time Jensen says, “Sorry about what?”

Prime looks at Jeff. Jeff doesn’t look at anyone, as he says, “If I told you,” finally, slowly, painstakingly, drawn out, “if I told you that Prime—Wallace—is my brother. Would you hear me out?”

There’s a long pause.

“Start talking,” Jensen says.

Jeff sounds exhausted. “Wallace couldn’t always bend reality. At most, he used to warp my books out of my hands. When he was fifteen, he was classified as Class B, and that was only because the nature of his powers was so attention-grabbing. Mostly spells, but instinctive, not refined, not like yours,” he says to Jared, “but stranger. He was going to join the academia.”

“I was interesting for research,” Prime says. He’s staring at his toes. “But not strong enough for anything practical.”

“What happened?” Jensen asks, and Jared, alive when he shouldn’t be, holding his boyfriend when he shouldn’t be, Jared thinks he might know this story.

“My power was attention-grabbing,” Prime repeats Jeff’s words. “I was recruited, at first, only for a six-month internship.”

“By Rex,” Jared says. And yes, Prime looks up, and yes, Jared knows this story.

“I was a battery,” Wallace says. “I was a battery, nothing more. Rex had this machine, outside of his job. He had others before me, others like me,” like Jared, “who had similar powers. He used us to create a reality where his prophecies would have to come true. I made that prophecy,” Jeff’s brother says, fiercely, to Jensen. “He made me make that prophecy about my own death. And then I ran away.”

 _We’ve been watching you,_ Rex had said.

Rex hadn’t been gunning for Prime. He hadn’t been gunning for Jensen or their kid. He’d been gunning for _Jared_. And Jared had fallen for it, hook line and sinker: he’d gotten Jensen pregnant, he’d fought Prime, and now he had the exact kind of powers that Rex wanted for him.

“And then you became Prime,” Misha says.

“I got the name from Buffy,” Wallace says. “Final season. The Prime Evil that Buffy and gang had to fight.”

“You’re a fucking adult,” Jeff snaps at Prime. “You should’ve let me help you. You should’ve said _something_. Not adopt a supervillain persona and hidden yourself away!”

“I didn’t want anyone to know.” Wallace sounds maybe all of fifteen, with all the timidity and rebellion that comes with the age. “I didn’t want Rex coming after me. I was hiding. You should’ve left me alone.”

“It was bad enough tracking you down, thinking I had to kill my own fucking brother!” Jeff looks the angriest Jared’s ever seen, probably because now Wallace isn’t trying to warp everything in sight and the Artists aren’t turning on him for betrayal.

“Jeff,” Alona says.

“Yeah,” Jeff says. He takes deep breaths. “Yeah. No. I’m sorry,” he says, to Alona, to Misha, to Jensen, and to Jared. “I’m so sorry. I should have told you from the beginning.” He gestures helplessly. “What would you have done,” he asks, “if you brother—?”

Jensen nods, very slowly. “Well,” he says. “Now we know what to do.”

Jared has no idea what that might be, not anymore. “We do?”

“Yeah,” Jensen says. “You,” he pokes Jared, “and Wallace are going to stay away from Rex.” He looks at the others. “The rest of us are gonna go find Rex. And we’re going to take the adorable little munchkin out, and destroy every single prophecy he’s made. You said if we destroy the record, it’ll stop the prophecy from becoming true, right?”

“Yeah,” Wallace says. “Yeah.”

“Good.” Jensen’s voice is crisp. “There is no way in crème brûlée that my pup is going to grow up to be some chosen one if I can help it. This prophecy is going to be broken, along with every other prophecy ever made, and we’re going to make sure he never does anything like this again.” He says the words like a wolf snarling over a kill, venom and fire woven in the delicate turns of in the pronunciation of French sweets.

“Why can’t I go?” Jared asks, because the plan sounds great minus all the risk of death and mayhem, and the part where he’s staying home while everyone else is out fighting the villain, including his pregnant boyfriend.

“You bend reality now,” Jensen says. “You’re a very good battery for him, and a great candidate for the next Prime. My pup isn’t going to have Vader for his father, either.”

“I wasn’t,” Wallace starts, and Jeff turns to him again, and the telepathic fight going on there is incredibly obvious.

Jared protests, “Vader saves his son in the end.”

“Yeah, while his son was trying to kill the evil emperor. This time, his husband’s going to kill the emperor before it comes to that.”

“I don’t think I can make this into a novel,” Misha says.

“You kids sort that out,” Jeff says. “I’m going to have a long talk with my brother. Let’s talk and plan later. Go.”


	4. Chapter 4

 

 

  
********

  
The Artists is a non-profit organization, with various tax exemption for its activities. It has a board of directors whom Jared has never met. Jensen apparently has controlling voting power because he’s the one whose secret identity has been shot to hell, but Jared has never seen him do jackshit other than bitch at Jeff. Jensen has tried to explain that this is what the board of directors is _supposed_ to do: nothing.

Jared has never pretended to know the inner workings of the corporate governance of a non-profit. He puts the matter up for a vote, anyways, because he figures it’s democratic and all.

“Can you bend reality yet?” Alona asks. She’s sitting on the counter, and for once Jeff’s letting it pass. Mostly, Jared assumes, because his younger brother fucked shit up, and also because there are even fewer seats left now in the strategy room. Jensen’s lying on the couch again, because despite not showing at all and no longer carrying the world’s chosen one, he can still pull the pregnancy card.

Wallace is sitting next to Jared. Jared’s not sure how to deal with the former-villain who maybe killed him, maybe not, and who’s no longer bending reality to hide from his personal tormentor but who still isn’t quite stable. But Jared’s doing to deal with that later. Right now, he’s fired up. He even as a powerpoint ready, if Alona would just power the damn projector.

“No bending reality,” Jared answers. “Or yes, I can, but I don’t know how. Try not to fall into any death traps. That’s not what’s important here.”

“Do you think Jared would’ve learned to manipulate space and time if it were just you dying, and not his child?” Misha asks Jensen. Alona kicks his face.

“Yes,” Jensen says. “Anakin went mad for Padmé’s death, not Luke’s.”

“I think you like the idea of Jared being evil,” Alona says, reproachfully. “You’re pushing this Vader analogy way too hard.”

“If my child has to be a foretold hero, I want him to be Luke, not Harry.”

Jared waves his arms. “If y’all would just pay attention to the actual god-popcorn issue, I’m trying to have a vote here,” he says. “Wallace and I should go with you. There’s no way you’re leaving us behind. Or at least me.”

“I don’t want to go,” Wallace says dubiously, then adds, “But Jeff said I owe that much.”

“I don’t want Rex capturing you,” Jensen says to Jared for the fifteenth time. “I don’t actually want you turning evil. We can roleplay that later if you really want.”

“If I don’t go with you, and you all lose, then I have to face him anyways,” Jared says, for the thirteenth time. “And then he turns me into Energizer Bunny anyways. Everyone has a better chance if I go, including me.”

“Mastermind, what are the possibilities that we’ll all die without Jared and-slash-or Wally?” Alona asks Jeff.

Jeff seems thoughtful. “Probably very high.”

“And what are the possibilities that Jared being there is a risk that will doom us all?”

“Also pretty high,” Jeff admits. “But we can conveniently sacrifice him to succeed in our mission if we tell ourselves that Jared would’ve wanted us to let him die to save his child.”

“We should never have fucked,” Jensen says to Jared, then looks incredibly annoyed.

“Do you know the Muffin Man,” Misha sings, presumably to counter Jensen’s swearing.

Jared meets Jeff’s eyes, and abruptly gains a deep understanding of how Jeff felt every single time he tried to get the Artists together for any kind of mission. He’s never going to give Jeff any kind of attitude again. “All right,” he says, loudly. “Just. Let’s put it up for a vote, you guys. All in favor of leaving me behind, say aye.”

“Aye,” Jensen says.

There’s silence.

“And all in favor of me going,” Jared says, smugly. “Aye.”

“Aye.”

“Aye.”

“Aye.”

“—yes I know the Muffin Man—”

“Oh, fuck you all,” Jensen says.

“Hey,” Jensen says, softly. He slips in, letting a ray of light from the hallway into the dark room for just a second, before closing the door behind. “What’re you still doing up?”

The mission is set for early tomorrow morning. It’s past midnight. Jared rubs his eyes, turns off the record in front of him. “Just,” he says. “Something I wanted to make. Just in case.”

“Audiotape?” Jensen asks, frowning, leaning over Jared’s shoulder to stare at the machine on the desk.

“Just in case,” Jared repeats.

Jensen’s hand tightens on his shoulder. “I’m really glad you bend time now,” he says, evenly. “You might become evil because you’re an idiot, and I might die of heartbreak, and Alona and Misha might have to raise this pup while Jeff strokes his beard. But at least you’ll live.”

Jared should let it go. But he’s tired, worn out, and he doesn’t think he actually has time to do another recording. And he owes Jensen something more than that.

So he says, slowly, “I don’t think it works like that. When I reversed time, I think it was because you were in danger. If _I’m_ dead, I don’t know if I have the energy to bend anything.”

Jensen’s staring. “You don’t mean,” he starts.

Jared turns his head so he can lay a kiss on the hand that’s on his shoulder. “You’ll be fine,” he says. “At least I know that. And you,” he adds, wryly, to the tyke.

“No,” Jensen says.

“Just in case,” Jared repeats, for the third time.

Jensen doesn’t let himself be pulled down. “Jared,” he says, evenly. “I don’t want my kid to know how much his father loved me. I don’t want my kid to hear about how his father was a hero. I want my kid to be taken to the park and ask me why his daddy can’t turn into a wolf like him, and bite your fingers when he’s teething.”

“Jensen,” Jared says.

“I want him to act out and make you punish him,” Jensen says. “I don’t fucking want him to hold on to an audiotape and a photo all his life, and never get the chance to hate his dad.”

“Jensen,” Jared says.

“It was always about you, you fucker,” Jensen says. “The only reason I had the courage. I screw everything up, Jared. My parents are dead and my sister won’t see me and you, apparently died like twenty two times. And now there’s this life inside me, depending on me for survival.” His knees scrape the floor, shadows camouflaging his body, and his words don’t waver, and Jared doesn’t know how Jensen’s doing it because he can’t even hold it together enough to say Jensen’s name again, uselessly, pathetically. “And it’s going to keep doing that for the next eighteen years and, Jared, I can’t do this without you.”

Jared feels his body slide down from the chair, kneeling in front of his boyfriend, both hands cupping around his shoulders. “I won’t,” he says. “I won’t let you do that. Every fucking step of the way. Kid’s going to gnaw my fingers off, and even then I won’t let go.”

“Pup,” Jensen says, and finally his voice breaks, and Jared leans forward to kiss him, capture him all over again like he did when he was nineteen and he’d made the grumpy TA in a hoodie laugh all the way through class with his antics, and every day afterwards.

_[End Tape]_

The fight goes something like this:

Prime knows where Rex is located. There is possibly a mansion. Pun wants to know whether it’d be poetic justice to reorder time until no villain, secret or super, uses a mansion. The Artists fly out. In a truly impressive measure of power unseen hitherto, PocketThunder takes out the entire electric board surrounding it, and traps any personnel within the building’s own walls.

Extinct scents out the underground facility. The team takes the elevator down. After a maze of corridors, they hit a concrete wall: a block that seems to go on and on.

Wallace puts a hand on the wall. “He’s probably in here—at least, the prophecy machine used to be.” He licks his lips. “You have to bend reality to create the door to get in.”

“Of course you do,” Jared sighs.

“Can you hold it open for others?” Jeff asks.

“I don’t think so,” Wallace says, hesitantly. Then to Jared, “but you could probably spell your way in.”

“Of course he could,” Jensen sighs.

_Couldn’t I, just, I don’t know, burn my way in?_ Misha taps the wall with a claw. _It doesn’t look that sturdy_.

“It’s not physically behind the wall,” Wallace says, with a remarkable show of patience for a former greatest evil on Earth named after a Buffy villain. “It’s magic.”

“So it’s me and you,” Jared says. He puts an experimental hand on the wall. “I’m thinking                and             ?”  

The concrete ripples, briefly, in front of them. Wallace taps his teeth with his tongue, three times. “I think that’ll do it.”

“I want it on record that I am extremely unhappy about this,” Jensen says. “What’s our contingency plan?”

Jared shrugs. “He’s going to leave one of us alive, and at least you’ll live long enough to give birth to our chosen one?” He considers. “Provided he doesn’t break the prophecy.”

“That’s a _shit_ plan,” Jeff says, like he’s revealing the mysteries of the Mariana Trench. Misha’s tinny dragon voice starts humming _Hot Cross Buns_ in all their heads.

Jared quirks an eyebrow at Jensen. “No Labyrinth joke. It didn’t go so well last time.”

“No jokes at all,” Jensen says. “Go kick ass, Pun.”

“I’ll be back,” Jared says, flashing a smile. Then he takes a deep breath, catches Wallace’s gaze, nods, and puts both hands on the wall.

It’s not a library, but there’s a bookshelf behind Rex when he turns. It’s a tiny room, but one half is taken over by complicated wires and power cords and—Jared gets a glimpse of a podium and a nefarious-looking glass container large enough to hold a person, before it undulates and blinks out of existence. From the way Wallace is trembling next to him, Jared assumes that was—had been—the prophecy machine.

“Well, look at both of you,” Rex says. He’s been waiting for them. And he’s still—

“Now would be a good time to let us know if you have a superpower,” Jared says. Latin’s running through his head. “Or if you have a last monologue left to go.”

“You know, in another lifetime, he does kill Jensen,” Rex says, indicating Prime with a gesture of his slender fingers. “In yet another, he kills Jeff before killing himself.”

“You read timelines,” Jared says. Wallace won’t speak next to him, can’t. “You know each timeline that’s been created. Alternate universes. That’s how you knew.”

—“I’m the Librarian,” Rex says.

_Most are driven mad by their powers_ , he had said. Jared’s now pretty sure Rex was referring to himself.

“Two narrators,” Librarian goes on. “Pun and Prime. Battling it out. Oh, a marvel to watch, in so many iterations: who will be the true narrator, in the end?”

“How’d that go for you?” Jared asks, evenly.

“Of course Prime had so much more practice and power. But you,” Rex says to Jared, “it took you four tries before you managed to find one where Jensen got away safely, but _what_ an ingenious way to do it. One rainy day, one relaxing afternoon, you two made a Bat-pole for a joke. That’s what you lacked,” he says to Wallace, and Jared feels the air in the room color brilliantly for a moment, a flickering prismatic Dali painting. “Imagination.”

“Wow, you did have a monologue ready,” Jared says.

“I had a lot of time,” Librarian says. He looks at the broken machine, shrugs, and leans back. The bookshelf has all the prophecies, Jared assumes. It’s okay if it doesn’t. He’s going to kill Rex, here, and then destroy every prophecy he can find. He’s okay with death first, questions later.

Librarian says, “Oh, but you can’t kill me.”

“It’s a doomsday device, isn’t it?” Jared asks. “Self-destructive bomb. Laser cannon aimed at New York City.” He smiles, and it’s a Pun smile, a Punchinello smile: “Villains like you, schemes like that, I’ve dealt with so many, I’ve lost count. This is nothing new.”

“You’ll die,” Librarian agrees. He pauses, for what can only be dramatic effect: “I’m not from this time. I’m from the past, a long time ago—before, even, little Wallace discovered his powers.”

Jared looks at Wallace, who stares at Librarian. Space melts in pockets around him, but he jerks a nod at Jared. “He’s right.”

“So,” Librarian says. “If you kill me, neither of you will have the powers of a narrator. And unfortunately, given that both of you have lasted this long only through cheating, so to speak, you won’t survive, either. Paradox,” he says, proudly and triumphantly.

And Jared thinks, considering the complicated threads of fate and time entwined in this moment: _this idiot thinks that’s going to save his life._

Jared’s and Wallace’s eyes meet. For the first time Jared sees the crinkles of eyes that reminds him of Jeff, sees the younger brother that Jeff must’ve known. Then Wallace snaps forward, and without using any powers, grabs Librarian’s throat and slams him against the wall, holding him there with nails digging into the sides of his neck.

“You know,” Wallace says. “I am surprisingly okay with that.”

Librarian can’t speak, gurgles out a sound that maybe could be _Jared_.

“Do it,” Jared says. And then, “Wait.” Wallace slides Librarian further up the wall by the throat, still choking, easily avoiding the legs that kick out. Jared takes a book from the shelf. There are no labels that he can read, but it doesn’t feel like a book; it’s heavier, its edges fuzzy with magic. He smashes it to the ground, watches it disappear, and looks at Wallace. At his nod, Jared continues through the shelf, rapidly going through them all. He doesn’t stop to wonder which one has his kid and a narrator’s death recorded.

“All right,” he says, finally, and steps back. Crosses his arms.

Librarian’s face is blue, and his glasses are crooked on his nose. Wallace lets go, then grabs his hair and spins him, throws him to the ground with all the care that Jared had shown the prophecies.

Jared imagines Prime has a bigger bone to pick than Pun does.

“Wait,” Rex rasps out. For the first time since Jared met the guy, he looks panicked. He stares up at Jared with wide eyes, broken glasses askew on his face, and reaches out a hand. “You fool,” he says, “you don’t understand, it wasn’t your life you were cheating, it was your child’s. You create this paradox now, and it won’t be your life you’re forfeiting.”

“I know,” Jared agrees. He kneels on the floor, and looks at Rex in the eye. “That was your mistake.”

Then he steps back, and nods at Wallace.

“Tell Jeff,” Wallace says, and lifts his foot.

“I will,” Jared says.

Wallace gives him a smirk, and it’s a Prime smirk, a First Evil smirk, before his foot comes crashing down on Rex’s skull.

Jared watches as both Wallace and Rex disappear before his eyes. For a second, everything is silent—

_one_

  
“Jesus Christ, you asshole,” Jensen says, startled, looking up from the floor where he’s marking papers, baseball cap firmly in place over his long hair. There’s a cat on the small of his back grooming himself, and Jared tilts his head and thinks about what’s for dinner before he wonders why Jensen’s calling him an asshole, and then he sees a tiny wolf pup charge the cat with a yipping battle cry; and her name is almost on the tip of his tongue when the pup smells him and turns her head to glance back at him with a huge grin and a wagging tail.

_two_

  
—and Jared has a brief second to wonder whether any warping had occurred, before the ceiling starts to cave on him.  
  
 _Oh_ , Jared thinks, looking up at the concrete cracking and breaking before piece by piece they start raining on him. He raises a hand to protect his eyes, and tries to nudge things back in place with                 . It doesn’t work. _Oh_ , he thinks, _I can live with that._  
  
Jared didn’t get his powers from Rex. He got them from Jensen and his kid. And apparently he’s powerless now, and for the first time he can think          and            as the building collapses on him. But even as cement peppers down on him, he knows outside the container, Jensen and his kid are—  
  
The world turns on its axis.  
  
Jared hears the building collapse behind him, and the impact blows his balance and he falls forward, scrapes his palms on the ground, and has to choke out the dust that clouds his lungs.  
  
Strong arms grab him. “You’re okay, you’re okay,” Jensen’s voice says. “You’re okay. Jared, can you hear me? You’re okay.”  
  
It takes a moment for Jared to orient himself. When he straightens, he’s in Jensen’s arms, and he stares up at the face smudged with dirt and worry, and twists around to stare at the disaster behind him: the mansion’s caved on itself. Then he turns back to his teammates, counting four. His mind is fuzzy on the edges.  
  
He blinks. He licks his lips.  
  
“That was bending,” Jeff confirms. He’s been looking at Jared all this time, but when Jared looks at him, he averts his eyes and goes back to the wasteland before them.  
  
“He said,” Jared tells Jeff, and doesn’t know what else to say, because Wallace is or is not dead, and may or may not have done it for Jeff, and Jared is still somehow here and alive. “I don’t know what happened,” he says, and it’s the only true thing he can say right now.  
  
“Yeah,” Jeff says, possibly about Wallace, or about Jared.  
  
“Uh,” Jensen says.  
  
Jared feels Jensen’s hand move between them to reach his belly, and for a stricken moment he feels like the ceiling is caving on him again, worry filling him up, but then Jensen raises his wide eyes at him, then at the rubble, at his teammates, then back to him. “I think it was,” he says.  
  
There's a long, long moment of silence.  
  
“You’re fucking kidding me,” Jeff says, finally.  
  
Alona slumps to the ground, two gloved fingers rubbing the bridge of her nose, smudging dirt further on her face. “Are you trying to say,” she says, calmly, “that not only is your spawn an extinct direwolf with huge teeth, but that in his spare time, he’s also a reality-bender?”  
  
“ _Before_ he’s even born?” Misha asks. He’s forgotten to sing anything.  
  
“I don’t actually know that he’s a direwolf,” Jensen says, which is not any kind of defense. “He could just really take after his daddy, for all I know.”  
  
The vision of a long-suffering Echidna being chased up a tree passes before Jared’s eyes. “No, I think she’s going to take after both of us,” he says, before he can stop himself.  
  
Jensen glances down, and there’s a lot of question packed into that look, but Jared feels his lips slowly curling up, and he’s started grinning before he knows it and he can’t stop. He leans back against Jensen and their pup, pulling both of them in a huge hug, feeling them alive and warm under his touch. “Jesus Christ,” he says. He feels like he’s been through a grinder, diced and minced, and he’s so relieved and happy.  
  
“I quit,” Jensen says. He’s hugging back just as hard. “I’m retiring. I can’t take this anymore. Maybe I’ll just go to Yellowstone and join a pack there.”  
  
“I’m not letting you go,” Jared says, and he’s talking to Jensen, mostly. “Or take me with you, I guess. But I’d mostly prefer it if you’d just stay in our home and not move for the next eighteen years.” A corner of his mind if absently deciding maybe he _will_ get an Escher room in the house, and to hell with Vader analogies.  
  
“Screw that,” Misha says. “I’m voting both of you off the team.”  
  
“Maybe just a maternity leave,” Alona says.  
  
Jeff’s turned away even as they were talking. Jared wants to say something, but he’s not even entirely sure what happened. Instead he turns his head, and presses his lips against Jensen’s, not kissing, just lying there with Jensen’s warmth against him in an incredibly reassuring touch. “I know what we’re going to call her, now,” he says. “WordPup. Get it? We’re gonna call her WordPup.”  
  
“Only if her brain is as damaged her father’s,” Jensen says. He stays there, solid and real, with Jared.

 

 

  
  
Two months after the Prime mess, which put the Department of Unnatural and Numinous Gifts under first an investigation, then a complete overhaul, one of the Artists who featured heavily in the incident announced that he was getting married: Jensen Ackles, alias Extinct, a.k.a. the darling direwolf who first made the world cry two decades ago with his story, is in fact getting married to his civilian boyfriend, Jared Padalecki. The story of how they met in school soon got out, and while Jensen’s decision to join a superhero team seemed to have strained their relationship at first, they managed to overcome their differences for their happy ending.  
  
Fans generally figured that it was the danger that Extinct went through during the Prime mission that made the two realize that their commitment to each other was for life. Some of them, who’d been convinced that Pun and Extinct were fucking behind the scenes and during their missions, were crushed.  
  
“You know, I think that went pretty well, all considering,” Jensen says, as Chris helps him into an emergency parachute.  
  
Jared’s not entirely sure what definitions of _pretty well_ Jensen is operating under. But Jensen’s looking happy, Jensen’s wearing a fluorescent smile above his bowtie hanging on an unbuttoned shirt, and Jared doesn’t have the heart to disabuse him of this moment.  
  
So he agrees, “No, not too bad, all given. Echidna might never come home after this, though.”  
  
“It’s not her fault,” Misha says. He’s helping Jared into his own parachute. “She didn’t know she was supposed to _deliver_ the ring, not eat it.”  
  
“I found another bomb, by the way,” Alona adds, and hands Jared a ticking bomb. “In the chandelier. Seriously, who hired this place?”  
  
“We had two months,” Jared says, and hands it to Chris, who rolls his eyes and flattens it.  
  
 _Congratulations_ , Jeff says. _Now please get the hell out of here._ Jared gets an image of MindMaster and Pun, being swarmed by the journalists outside, and he grins.  
  
“You know, this was supposed to be a stealth mission,” Jensen says. All strapped in, he’s now eating cake from a paper plate with a plastic fork. Jensen has never had a sweet tooth before, and having watched him devour cupcake after cupcake in the past few weeks, Jared’s mostly convinced that it was all the non-swearing that everyone did around Jensen that’s caused this new bout of addiction.  
  
 _Guys, I found three more bombs under the stairs_ , Aldis speaks into all their minds. _I sent Beth to get it, but she might need back up, Chris. You weren’t kidding about needing help, jeez._  
  
Jared says to Jensen, mildly, “Those have sprinkles. You know you’re wearing black?”  
  
 _Is it the red wire I’m supposed to cut, or the blue?_ Defiance asks. She sends a brief snapshot of the bombs.  
  
“Want a bite?” Jensen asks Jared. He holds out a forkful of the cake, eyelashes fluttering flirtatiously, and Jared grins and leans down, wrapping his tongue around the sweet mouthful and watching Jensen’s eyes go dark.  
  
 _Guys, guys, they’ve broken through_ , says Jeff. _They’re heading upstairs, I repeat, they’re coming, you have to go_ now.  
  
“You got a bit of cream, there,” Jared says, and mouths at the tip of Jensen’s nose, licking up the mess. Jensen laughs and squirms.  
  
Misha tightens the straps of the parachute with force, choking Jared in midst of licking. “All set,” he announced innocently.  
  
 _Maybe I can throw one of the bombs at the journalists_ , Defiance says. She’s still debating between red and blue.  
  
“Maybe you can throw it at these two,” Chris speaks out loud. He’s holding the door closed with his body, which is rattling with alarming violence, even given his ability to absorb any kind of impact.  
  
Jensen drops the plate and the fork. “Jared,” he whispers, his mouth opening in wonder in an impossibly adorable way, and Jared thinks he looks younger than ever. “Jared. She’s _kicking_.”  
  
“Oh my god,” Jared says, and instantly falls to his knees, both hands wrapping around the barely-noticeable bump on Jensen’s body. “Baby?” he whispers. “Baby, can you hear me?”  
  
The air vent to his left opens, and Wallace climbs out, huffing. He turns around to give a hand up to Jeff, who’s clearly thinking that he’s too old for this shit. “I don’t think the journalists bought me as Pun,” Wallace pants. “I’m not tall enough.”  
  
“Your powers are alike enough,” Jeff says, then stares at Jared, still kneeling by Jensen’s feet. “What the fuck are you idiots doing?”  
  
Alona’s by the door now, helping Chris hold it closed. Behind it, a loud explosion sounds, a bit like a bomb going off in a crowd.  
  
 _Guys_ , _I see helicopters in the air_ , Aldis says, urgently.  
  
Jared hauls to his feet, gathers Jensen into his arms. “You jump, I jump?” he asks, grinning down at Jensen, their rings touching where their hands are entwined, his family in his embrace and his friends surrounding them.  
  
Jensen tiptoes up to kiss him, then suddenly leans back. “No, wait,” he says, “I need to take a picture of this moment, wait,” and starts frantically looking for his phone in his tux.  
  
“Holy _shit_ ,” Wallace says, and, with vehemence hitherto unseen since he gave up being Prime, projects Jared and Jensen out the window from the sixty-third floor.  
  
Five minutes and thirteen hundred miles later, still laughing, ankle deep in Tower creek, Yellowstone, Jared kisses his husband again, dreaming of direwolves and destinies, prophetic sonnets, and the refuge of love, and thinks: _this is how the story ends_.  


 

 

 

 

  
_[History]_

_Record archived by _ _██████__ , alias Extinct_   
_Record accessed by _ _█████████__ , alias Narrator_   
_Record accessed by _ _ _██████ _ _ _██______ , alias Ace_   
_Record accessed by _ _ _███___ , from DUNG_   
_Record accessed by _ _ _██████___ , alias Digital, _   
_and _ _ _██████ _ _ _███______ , alias Damage  _   
_Record taken out by _ _█████████__ , alias Narrator_   
_Record re-archived by _ _ _██████___ , alias Extinct_   
_Record accessed by _ _ _██████ _ _ _█████ _ _ _██████_________ , alias WordPup. _

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Biblography [here.](http://necrora.livejournal.com/6217.html)


End file.
